By Dan Ambrose: 50-year-old Bernard Hopkins (55-7-2, 32 KOs) plans on fighting after his 51st birthday next January 2016. Hopkins is interested in fighting WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham. Hopkins says that discussions are going on between his side and Abraham’s promoters at Sauerland Events, and he says they are very interested in the fight. Hopkins feels certain that he’ll be fighting the 35-year-old Abraham next January.
It’s a somewhat interesting fight between Hopkins and Abraham, but not one that would likely resonate in the United States. You can’t blame Hopkins for going for this fight because it might be the best thing he can get at this point.
I doubt that he could get a fight against the other super middleweight champions Badou Jack and James DeGale. Neither of those fights would likely be big either in the U.S. There’s no point in Hopkins trying to fight WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, because that would be a really tough fight for Hopkins at this point in his career.
A fight against WBA “regular” light heavyweight champion Juergen Braehmer wouldn’t attract a lot of interest in the U.S, because the casual boxing fans aren’t familiar with Braehmer. The only fans that know of Abraham in the U.S are the hardcore boxing fans, and some of the casual fans that tuned into the Super Six tournament between 2009 and 2011 to see Abraham KO Jermain Taylor, but then lose three straight fights to Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward and Carl Froch.
I’m sure the casual fans that saw those fights weren’t all that impressed with Abraham. If that’s all they remember Abraham for, then I doubt they’re going to be interested in seeing Hopkins fight him.
“I’m looking to go in January of this year. We’re in talks with HBO,” Hopkins said to Fighthub. “We’re in talks with Arthur Abraham. So we are in serious talks. I can tell you this. Arthur Abraham wants it. His promoter wants it. My promoter wants it. I want it. Everybody wants it. We’re crunching over a couple of things. It’s going to happen. I really feel it’s going to happen,” Hopkins said.
Hopkins has been out of the ring since last year in November when he was beaten by WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev by a 12 round unanimous decision. It wasn’t a close fight at all, as Kovalev had too much fire power for Hopkins.
After knocking him down early in the fight, Kovalev was able to cruise the rest of the way to win an easy decision. You can call it a minor victory for Hopkins that he was able to go the distance with Kovalev because a lot of the guys that the Russian fighter has faced haven’t been able to achieve this.
There’s really no one for Hopkins to fight at this point. Abraham is about as good as it gets unfortunately. After Hopkins’ loss to Kovalev, it kind of left him in a bad position in terms of his career. His only other options for big fights at 175 would be for him to fight Jean Pascal and Stevenson. Hopkins already fought Pascal twice, beating him once and fighting to a draw a second time. I doubt that Pascal would want to fight Hopkins a third time.
You’d have to favor Abraham to beat Hopkins based on how Hopkins looked in losing to Kovalev. He did not look good in that fight at all, and I question whether Hopkins can still pull the trigger on his punches at 50. When Hopkins does come back in 2016 after being out of the ring for over a year, I can’t imagine that he’ll have improved over the fighter that lost to Kovalev. If anything, Hopkins will be worse than he was.
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