(Photo credit: Tom Casino/Showtime) By Allan Fox: WBA Super World light heavyweight champion Beibut Shumenov (14-1, 9 KO’s) expects to beat 49-year-old Bernard Hopkins (54-6-2, 32 KO’s) on Saturday night in their unification match and show fans who the best fighter is in the world in their fight on Showtime at the DC Armory, in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
For the 30-year-old Shumenov, he’s not been able to get the important fights recently to show off his talent, but now that he’s signed with Golden Boy Promotions, he’s able to get the big fights that he’s always wanted. If he can beat Hopkins on Saturday night, Shumenov will waking the boxing world up by showing them he’s for real and not just a paper title holder, which is how some boxing fans see him.
“I’m ready to show the world what I’m capable of. I will show the world that I am the best light heavyweight champion.”
Shumenov is getting a little ahead of him here. If he beats the soon to be 50-year-old Hopkins, he will have shown that he’s better than him, but he’ll still need to prove that he’s better than the WBC 175lb champion Adonis Stevenson.
Shumenov will likely never get a chance to fight the WBO champion Sergey Kovalev, though, because he fights on HBO and Shumenov’s fights are on Showtime. But in beating Hopkins and Stevenson, Shumenov will at least be able to say that he’s got the majority of the light heavyweight titles. Fans could then speculate how he’d do against the slugger Kovalev, but they’d never really know.
“You’re mistaken if you think I’m going into this as if I’m fighting a 50-year-old man,” Shumenov said. “On Saturday night we are going to see who is taking whose belts.”
Shumenov obviously is very aware that Hopkins is well preserved for a 49-year-old man, but he also knows that Hopkins needs to fight at a slow pace for him to do well. When he was pushed at a high pace for brief periods of time in his last fight against Karo Murat, he showed his age and didn’t look nearly as impressive. Shumenov is a bigger puncher than Murat, and he’s also capable of throwing nonstop punches for 12 rounds.
Shumenov doesn’t have the hand speed that Hopkins does, but he’s got the work rate, power, and youth to give him a lot of problems in this fight. Hopkins is going to need to move a great deal on Saturday for him to avoid getting beaten up and out-worked by the younger Shumenov.
This is a big step up for Hopkins from the last two easy fights he’s had against Tavoris Cloud and Murat. It’s quite possible that we might see the same Hopkins that struggled against Chad Dawson this Saturday night. Hopkins didn’t look good in his two fights with Dawson, but he’s had it easy since those fights with him being matched against Cloud and Murat.
A lot of fans have gotten an unclear picture of where Hopkins is at right now due to the level of his last two opponents. On Saturday night, the Shumenov-Hopkins fight will give up a clearer picture of where Hopkins is at. If he wins, you can say for sure that he’s one of the top 3 light heavyweights in the division. If he loses, then his position is reduced to No.4 in the 175lb division, which isn’t bad for a fighter nearing 50.
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