By Chris Williams: After 17 years of waiting, light heavyweight Bernard Hopkins (50-5-1, 32 KO’s) is looking to get revenge against Roy Jones Jr. (54-6, 40 KO’s) on April 3rd when they meet at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hopkins, 45, doesn’t care that Jones appears to be almost completely shot at this point in his career and was stopped in the 1st round in his last fight against Danny Green in December. Hopkins wants revenge regardless of how poorly Jones was beaten.

In 1993, Jones, while fighting with only one hand after injuring his right early in the fight, defeated Hopkins by a 12 round decision. All these years, the two fighters have talked about fighting a rematch, but it took all this time for them to finally put together a fight. Unfortunately, both of them are near the end of their careers and don’t appear be as popular with boxing fans as they once were.

Both Hopkins and Jones have been working actively to try and hype their April 3rd fight, but it looks like they have a long ways to go to try and drum up interest among boxing fans, because the fight isn’t being discussed much on internet boxing forums. When it is mentioned at all, it’s usually in the negative context. Hopkins says in an interview with ESPN “This fight is very important to me because it’s personal. A lot of fighters don’t have history. We’ve [Hopkins and Jones] got 17 plus-year-history.”

That may be true, but it’s difficult to imagine what Hopkins will be accomplishing by fighting Jones at this point. It’s also hard to believe that Hopkins will feel good about beating Jones now. Even if Hopkins does beat Jones, it won’t undo what Jones, in his prime, did by beating a prime Hopkins with only one hand.

If Jones had two good hands in that fight, it’s scary to think what he would have done with Hopkins. Jones was the best fighter in all of boxing for a 10 year time period from 1993 to 2003, and he was virtually untouchable in the ring during that time frame. In the early 1990s, Jones was especially good because of his blazing hand speed and airtight defense.

It was almost as if he fighting at warp speed against fighters who were mere mortals. Jones was unbeatable during that time. Hopkins won’t prove anything by beating Jones now other than the fact he’s aged better than Roy. Hopkins says “To me this is redemption in a lot of ways. I waited a lot of years, one through a lot of matches to get this done.”

The fight as you would guess is taking place on pay-per-view for anyone who cares to see it. Given that there’s no titles on the line and no real meaning to the fight other than the revenge aspect, it amounts to being nothing other than old timers fight as far as I’m concerned. If you like Jones and Hopkins, and don’t mind seeing them fighting at less their top form without a title on the line, then this is the fight for you.