Golovkin gets exposed by Hopkins at 160, says Angel Garcia

By Boxing News - 07/31/2014 - Comments

hopkins2222By Dan Ambrose: Angel Garcia, the father of WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia, thinks that 49-year-old IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KOs) would beat WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (30-0, 27 KOs) if Hopkins were to come down to 160 to fight Golovkin for his title. Angel believes that Hopkins, even at 50, would still beat Golovkin.

“Bernard should fight this Triple G, and come down to middleweight. I bet Bernard exposes him,” Angel said. “I’m saying Bernard would expose him at [age] 50.”

Hopkins hasn’t fought at middleweight in the past nine years since his loss to Jermain Taylor in 2005. Hopkins moved up to light heavyweight after that fight. The closest that Hopkins has come to the middleweight division is when he fought former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik at a catch-weight of 170 pounds in 2008.

Hopkins easily beat Pavlik by a 12 round decision in that fight. However, 170 pounds = light heavyweight, not middleweight, and it’s highly unlikely that Hopkins could come anywhere near the 160 pound weight limit for a fight against Golovkin. I doubt that Hopkins would even try to make 160 for a fight against Golovkin.

If a fight were made between the two of them, Hopkins would probably use his popularity to get Golokin to fight him in the neighborhood of 166-170 rather than Hopkins moving down in weight to fight Golovkin. Hopkins would likely be weakened and totally ineffective if he had to come down to 160 to fight Golovkin.

Golovkin would be a big problem for Hopkins if that fight were to be made because of his power. Hopkins doesn’t throw a lot of punches anymore, and he’s not fought a good opponent since his loss to Chad Dawson in 2012. Hopkins has won his last three fights against Tavoris Cloud, Karo Murat and Beibut Shumenov.

Those aren’t great fighters, and Hopkins is still pretty much the same fighter that Dawson beat in 2012, only a little slower than he was in that fight. Golovkin would be putting hands on Hopkins and hitting him with shots that he’s not been hit by in a long time. While Hopkins fights at 175, he’s not been fighting guys with Golovkin’s type of power since he moved up in weight in 2005. The guys that Hopkins has faced at 175 haven’t been huge punchers like Golovkin, and they didn’t have his skill-set. Golovkin’s heavy shots would be a problem for Hopkins no matter how good his chin is.

Hopkins wants to fight WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev in the near future. That’s going to be a major battle for Hopkins because his low work rate won’t be high enough to keep Kovalev off of him. Besides that, Hopkins’ head movement and shoulder roll won’t be enough to keep him from getting hit with a lot of hard head shots.

The only way Hopkins wins that fight is if he can find the fountain of youth to help him increase his low work rate, because he’s not going to be able to depend on Kovalev just staying on the outside throwing occasional wild power shots the way Shumenov did recently against him.



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