Hopkins easily defeats Shumenov

By Boxing News - 04/19/2014 - Comments

hopkins62By Jim Dower: IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KO’s) easily defeated WBA light heavyweight champion Beibut Shumenov (14-2, 9 KO’s) by a 12 round split decision on Saturday night at the DC Armory in Washington, DC. The final judges scores were 116-111, 116-111 for Hopkins, and 114-113 for Shumenov. Hopkins now has the IBF and WBA light heavyweight titles. The only belts he doesn’t possess is the WBC title held by Adonis Stevenson and the WBO belt held by Sergey Kovalev.

Those fighters are much, much better than Shumenov, and Hopkins will have a hard time beating them by pot shotting like he did tonight. To beat Stevenson and Kovalev, Hopkins would have to let his hands go in a way that he doesn’t seem capable of doing any longer. Hopkins’ trainer Naazim Richardson was practically begging him to let his hands go and throw combinations, but Hopkins couldn’t do it. All he could do was throw single pot shots. I was good enough to beat a limited champion like Shumenov, but it won’t be good enough to beat the higher quality light heavyweight champions in Stevenson and Kovalev.

Hopkins knocked Shumenov down in the 11th round with a straight right hand to the head. It was a perfect right hand that sent Shumenov down. The scoring for the fight was off as far as the judge that scored it for Shumenov. He appeared to win the first couple of rounds and then the 10th. But the remaining rounds were Hopkins.

Shumenov followed Hopkins around all night long with his left hand by his side instead of protecting his chin. This enabled Hopkins to pot shot him each round. Hopkins’ work rate wasn’t that high, but Shumenov made it easy by not throwing combinations like he should have done. Shumenov’s only chance of winning the fight was to throw a massive amount of punches, but he failed to do that.

“I want to be the undisputed champion by the time I’m 50,” Hopkins said after the fight.

If Hopkins defeats WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson in another unification bout, Hopkins would have three of the four light heavyweight titles. However, his chances of getting a chance against WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev will be next to impossible due to Kovalv fighting on HBO and Hopkins on Showtime. That barrier will keep that fight from being made, and Hopkins isn’t young enough to wait until Kovalev’s contract with HBO expires for them to fight.

Shumenov didn’t look like he was mentally ready to compete with Hopkins in this fight because Shumenov needed to make adjustments early in the right by holding his left arm high. Shumenov was missing with everything he threw, and he wasting time loading up instead of focusing on throwing speedy combinations.



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