By Matt Stein: Former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins (49-5-1, 32 KO’s) dropped a bombshell last night when he suddenly announced on Friday Night Fights that he’s interested in fighting the winner of the November fight between Chad Dawson (28-0, 17 KO’s) and Glen Johnson (49-12-2, 33 KO’s) next. This is a shocking revelation for the 44-year-old Hopkins, because he’s been hesitant to fight Dawson previously, saying that he didn’t want to hurt the sport of boxing by destroying anymore of it’s future stars.
Hopkins did exactly that in his last fight, defeating WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in an embarrassingly one-sided 12-round unanimous decision in an fight at a 170 pound catch weight in October.
I frankly don’t think Hopkins can beat Dawson now or ever. Dawson is like better version of Jermain Taylor, who twice beat Hopkins in 2005. Hopkins may be ale to act as a spoiler by clinching Dawson frequently the way that Antonio Tarver did in his second fight with Dawson in May, but it won’t work. Even with Hopkins’ punch and grab technique, he won’t be able to catch the eyes of the judges, who no doubt will be more impressed with the better speed, power, combinations and work rate from Dawson.
Now that Hopkins has gotten old, he’s adopted the John Ruiz punch and clinch strategy and it keeps fights close, but not close enough for him to get the wins against good opponents like Joe Calzaghe and probably not against Dawson. I expect Hopkins to take a lot of punishment against Dawson if they ever do fight and end up looking his age by resorting to clinching and other stalling tactics.
Against Kelly Pavlik, a slow one dimensional middleweight, Hopkins didn’t need to use these tricks because he was the much superior fighter. However, Dawson is better than Hopkins in every department – taller, faster, stronger, better mover and a southpaw. It’s a bad match up for Hopkins no matter what stage of his career.
Dawson, 27, is considered to be far and away the best fighter in the light heavyweight division. Besides Johnson, 40, there are few fighters that can compete with Dawson in the division. Dawson previously fought Johnson last year in April, beating him by a 12-round unanimous decision that many people felt should have been a victory for Johnson.
Dawson will be trying to clear that up the rematch with Johnson later on this year. I had Dawson winning the fight by four rounds and didn’t see it as close as some people did. Dawson made the mistake of taking rounds off and covering up. That wasn’t a wise thing to do because Johnson was able to win a lot of rounds easily without having to contest for them. However, when Dawson was motivated and fighting hard, he easily won the rounds as if he was turning on a switch and putting his offense in overdrive.
The problem is, Dawson has a problem staying active at times in his fights and that was a clear problem in his fight with Johnson. I expect Dawson to dominate Johnson in November using his speed, jab, work rate and movement to control the action. Johnson is good, but he wasn’t competitive when Dawson was actually fighting him and not just lying on the ropes and covering up.
Hopkins has been undecided what to do with his career since that fight, briefly looking at a fight against International Boxing Federation cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek but then reportedly giving him a lowball offer that Adamek wasn’t interested in accepting. Hopkins win over Pavlik might have scared away other middleweight contenders that might have considered a fight with the 44-year-old Hopkins.
However, mostly, though, there’s too few fighters that have the appeal for Hopkins to waste time fighting. There was talk of Hopkins fighting WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch, but that was shot down because Froch said that he would probably not get enough money in the fight to make it worthwhile.
From Hopkins’ perspective, the younger less well known fighters like Froch should be willing to take the short end up the pay scale because it would give them a great opportunity to build up their name by fighting a legendary fighter like Hopkins.
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