By Dan Ambrose: John David Jackson, the trainer for WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (25-0-1, 23 KOs), believes that IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KOs) is going to go into survival mode once he gets hit hard for the first time by Kovalev in their fight coming up next month on November 8th at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA.
Jackson thinks that Hopkins isn’t going to want to stand and trade with Kovalev once he feels his power for the first time. Jackson also doubts that Hopkins will be able to go 12 hard rounds with Kovalev at nearly 50, and after what he expects to be a very hard training camp.
If Hopkins trains hard for the Kovalev fight, Jackson sees Hopkins being worn out coming into the fight. But if Hopkins cruises through training camp in order to have energy for the fight then he’ll run out of energy late in the fight, Jackson says.
“Does Bernard have it within him to fight hard for 12 hard rounds? You have to remember he’s an old man,” Jackson said via esnewsreporting.com. “When he [Kovalev] first clips him, he’ll say ‘Damn, this guy can punch.’ And he’ll the go into survival mode. The punching power [of Kovalev] is second to none. He can punch. Kovalev has that in both hands. Now that he’s understanding the body punching, he’s become an all-around fighter. A body can’t take that kind of punishment, and a 50-year-old body can’t take that kind of punishment.”
Hopkins is definitely going to want to slow things down in order to make it as easy a fight as possible, because he’s not going to want to fight a slugger like Kovalev at a fast pace. If you look at Hopkins’ last three fights against Karo Murat, Tavoris Cloud and Beibut Shumenov, all three of them have been fought at a slow pace for Hopkins to conserve energy.
Even dating back to Hopkins fights against Jean Pascal and Chad Dawson, those fights were fought at a slow pace.
“Your momma and your father await for you on mars. You need to go home,” Kovalev said about Hopkins to esnewsreporting.
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