By Matt Stein: Former middleweight and light heavyweight champion of the World Bernard Hopkins (49-5-1, 32 KOs) is looking for a big money for his next bout, but so far he’s had little luck in landing the right opponent that’s will to take the money that he’s offering. In a lot of ways, Hopkins’ career is now mimicking the final days of Joe Calzaghe’s career.
Like Calzaghe, one of Hopkins’ main objectives is to land a big money fight before he calls it a day. However, thus far, Hopkins’ options seem much more limited than Calzaghe’, the reason being that there isn’t a big star in the light heavyweight division for Hopkins to fight.
International Boxing Federation light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson may be more talented than Hopkins and would likely beat him if they were to fight, but Dawson doesn’t have the fan base as of yet at this point in his still young career.
Hopkins faced a similar situation for much of his career, but now that he’s been fighting for 21 years as a pro, Hopkins has picked up a respectable amount of fans, although nothing in comparisons to other stars like Floyd Mayweather Jr., Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton.
Just when Hopkins started to pick up some attention in his career after defeating Oscar De La Hoya in a 9th round KO in 2004, Hopkins was beaten twice by Jermain Taylor in 2005. Hopkins came back from the defeats to beat Antonio Tarver and Winky Wright in 2006 and 2007, but then Hopkins was beaten once again this time by Joe Calzaghe in April 2008.
After that fight, many boxing fans felt that Hopkins was finished as a fighter, but he then came back and defeated middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik by a 12 round decision in October 2008. The win was a huge one for Hopkins specifically because of his age and the fact that he was considered finished by so many fans.
However, since the win Hopkins career has gone into a state of paralysis as he searched for the right opponent to fight. Like a lot of fighters that have previously made big money, it doesn’t get easy when there are few big named opponents available to fight.
Although Hopkins has a ton of options for good fights available to him, most of them are against younger fighters that the casual boxing fan has little knowledge of. One of those opponents that Hopkins is interested in, International Boxing Federation cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek, turned down an offer from Hopkins for a bout due to the money not being good enough.
Hopkins would like to win the IBF title to add to his collection. However, unless Hopkins is interested in giving Adamek a bigger cut of the purse, it’s likely that this bout won’t happen. Dawson, 26, has a previous victory over Adamek and would seem like the logical opponent for Hopkins, but for the lack of a huge fan base, Dawson isn’t nearly as appealing an option for Hopkins.
Besides that, Dawson would be a very tough opponent for a fighter Hopkins’ age and it would take a super fight for Hopkins to beat Dawson. Hopkins could take on a talented super middleweight like Lucian Bute or Mikkel Kessler if he wanted to, but neither of those guys seem to interest Hopkins, probably for the same reasons why Dawson isn’t an appealing opponent.
Kessler and Bute aren’t well known in the U.S., and would bring in few fans. Ideally, if Hopkins had a big enough fan base on his own, he could do well against any opponent that he faces, but as we saw in his Calzaghe fight, that’s simply not the case.
This is why Hopkins needs someone really special in order to get a huge payday. If Shane Mosley was a little bit bigger or if De La Hoya had anything left, those two would be the perfect fights for Hopkins, but that’s not the case. Hopkins might either have to retire with Pavlik being his last fight, or else consider offering more money to Adamek.
Even if he does, though, the Adamek fight won’t be huge by any stretch of the imagination because Adamek is in the class of Dawson as far as being known by casual boxing fans. If Hopkins wanted to help his legacy, he’d take the Dawson fight, because Chad is considered by many boxing experts to be the number #1 light heavyweight division. However, I seriously doubt that Hopkins will ever fight Dawson.
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