By Jim Dower: Bernard Hopkins, 43, is probably hoping he can slow the fight down enough against Kelly Pavlik, 26, on Saturday to make the fight close at the end. In doing so, he wins regardless of the outcome. Hopkins would remain a viable opponent for other top fighters to hone their teeth on, and give him additional big money title shots against other champions or top fighters. At his age, Hopkins is in the position of a spoiler, someone who comes out smelling like a rose if he can fight close enough to make the other fighter look bad in winning. After all, if a fighter like Pavlik was really as good as people say he is, he wouldn’t have to struggle to beat a fighter as old as forty-three year old Hopkins.
The problem is, Pavlik has never been a fighter that wins his bouts without getting messy in the process. He always gets hit with big shots by his opponents, and only succeeds due to his nonstop withering fire. Pavlik was previously knocked down in fights with Fulgencio Zuniga and Jermain Taylor, and on each occasion, he got up off the deck to return fire and eventually win the fights.
Pavlik probably won’t be knocked down by Hopkins on Saturday night, unless it’s a flash knockdown like the one that Hopkins scored over Joe Calzaghe in the 1st round of their bout in April. However, Hopkins won’t find it difficult to land his shots against Pavlik, who will make it easy for him by coming straight at him the whole bout.
So Pavlik won’t look entirely good against Hopkins unless he can somehow take the old man out at some point in the fight. That probably won’t be happening. Hopkins can take a heck of a shot, and probably won’t be giving Pavlik a lot of opportunities to land because he’ll be clinching him a lot. Even when Hopkins is not clinching, he likes to stand on the outside against his more skilled opponents until he sees an opening, at which point he will come rushing in to land a couple of hard shots followed by an immediate clinch. On the inside, Hopkins is wiry, skillful at infighting.
He’s probably much more skilled than Pavlik is on the inside, and might make that one of his strategies to use to beat Pavlik. However, it’s doubtful whether Hopkins can keep up his attack for more than six rounds without tiring out like he did in his last fight against Calzaghe. Hopkins looked old and faded in the past six rounds, falling down from low blows that didn’t appear low and seeming to need time to rest a lot. He looked old in the second half of the fight, and lost most of the rounds – and the momentum – that he had built in the first half of the fight.
Against Pavlik, Hopkins will be facing someone who will be much more aggressive than Calzaghe was in the first half of the fight, who will be punching much harder. Pavlik will continue throwing hard shots in the second half of the bout, which is where Hopkins will get beaten. I have my doubts that Hopkins, even with all the grabbing and wrestling that he’ll likely do, will be able to avoid getting hit with some powerful shots. This is going to be one of the rare fights that Hopkins gets hit a lot and probably gets cut once or twice. I don’t see how he can avoid it unless he really clinches beyond what he’s already doing in most of his recent fights.
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