Hopkins looking forward to beating Shumenov to get to Stevenson

By Boxing News - 04/03/2014 - Comments

By Jim Dower: IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (54-6-2, 32 KO’s) is hoping to get past WBA champion Beibut Shumenov (14-1, 9 KO’s) on April 19th so that he can face the winner of the May 24th fight between WBC champion Adonis Stevenson and Andrzej Fonfara to ultimately decide who the No.1 light heavyweight is for Showtime televised 175 pounders.

We’ll probably never find out who the true best light heavyweight is because of the network obstacles that will prevent WBO champion Sergey Kovalv from fighting the winner of Showtime’s 175lb tournament.

Hopkins is pretty confident that he’ll be able to get past Shumenov on the 19th. For Hopkins to do so, he’s going to have to look a lot better than he did in his last fight against Karo Murat last October. Hopkins was hit a lot in that fight by a limited opponent, and for the first time in his career he looked his age. Shumenov is far from being a great light heavyweight, but he’s definitely better than Murat. For this reason Hopkins is going to need to raise his game considerably to beat Shumenov and leave no doubt in doing so.

“It’s good for both of us, myself and Shumenov, because we’re going on April 19, in D.C. on Showtime,” Hopkins said. “[Stevenson’s move is] going to be mentioned by the commentators leading up to the fight. So, it’s out there. It was out there when Stevenson came on board, and we’ll see him fighting his fight in May. So all of these things are a win-win for the boxing fans. People want to see one guy. When you’re a fighter, you want all of the major belts. Stevenson has made it clear that he wants to fight other champions, myself, and anybody else … The winner will move forward, and I’m looking to be the winner, and to make history again.”

Hopkins shouldn’t look past Shumenov because he very well could lose this fight if Shumenov is able to throw enough punches to make it difficult for Hopkins to keep up with him. Hopkins isn’t capable of throwing a lot of punches at this late stage in his career. All Shumenov has to do is throw 50 or more punches per round, and focus on his accuracy to get the win over the aging Hopkins. It’s definitely possible because Hopkins’s last fight against Murat showed that he’s definitely deteriorated somewhat from his performance against Tavoris Cloud.



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