By Scott Gilfoid: Bernard Hopkins (49-5-1, 32 KOs) exposed previously unbeaten Kelly Pavlik on Saturday night, soundly beating him by a lop-sided 12-round unanimous decision at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hopkins, 43, fought much better than he’s looked since beating Felix Trinidad years ago, dominated Pavlik throughout the 12-round, and made him look like a rank amateur. I predicted the outcome days earlier after noticing how limited Pavlik looked against Jermain Taylor, Edison Miranda and Jose Luis Zertuche, arguably Pavlik’s best competition up until his fight with Hopkins on Saturday night.

Pavlik, 26, who fights in a traditional straight forward type of style, immediately had huge problems with Hopkins lateral movement. Accustomed to having his opponents stand directly in front of him, where they’re essentially helpless, Pavlik was completely lost with Hopkins’ constant movement and had no plan B to counter this style. Even worse for Pavlik, however, was that Hopkins had the much faster hands.

This was crucial, because not only did Pavlik have to deal with all the movement from Hopkins, but he was also getting beaten to the punch by the much faster Hopkins. Even with all that going against him, Pavlik still had one – and that being that Hopkins might somehow tire out like he did in the second half of his fight with Joe Calzaghe in April. Well, Hopkins did tire out, somewhat, but enough nearly enough for it to make much of a difference in the outcome.

By the time that Hopkins did began to slow down a little, it was the 7th round and Pavlik had already taken a lot of punishment, too much, in fact, for him to mount much of an offensive counter attack. Pavlik’s nose was bloodied early on, and in the second half of the fight he looked beaten and very discouraged. Maybe just gave up himself, because Pavlik fought with little energy after the first few rounds and looked for the most part like he was just going through the motions out there.

Hopkins never allowed him to do much, as Hopkins moved constantly to his right and made Pavlik miss with his jabs and power shots. When Hopkins would decide to land his own punches, he would lunge in quickly and land one or two combinations and then get away before Pavlik had much of a chance to react. Unlike in his fight with Calzaghe, Hopkins rarely clinched at all, and threw many more combinations than he had in his last three or four fights.

He looked almost like a completely different fighter than he’d showed in the past few years, maybe as good as he was way back in 2001. In the later rounds of the fight, Hopkins chose to fight on the inside, no longer afraid to mix it up with Pavlik at close range. On the inside, Hopkins proved to be the much better fighter there as well, hitting Pavlik to the body and head, and then tying him up in a clinch to prevent him from getting any shots off in return.

As the fight wore on, it became embarrassingly one-sided as Hopkins was not only beating Pavlik, but giving him a humiliating schooling in the process. For a fighter that was predicted by many boxing experts to knock Hopkins out, it was a humbling experience Pavlik, who looked like a child in the ring in comparison to Hopkins, the master.

Pavlik was stunned several times in the bout, including the 12th round in which Hopkins poured it on trying for a knockout. He wasn’t able to stop Pavlik, but he had him hurt and bloodied at the end. The final judges’ scores were 117-109, 119-106 and 118-108.