By Eric Thomas: 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) had picked WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (25-2, 23 KO’s) to pull off an upset of IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (56-3, 49 KO’s) in their fight on July 2nd. Indeed, Hopkins had this to the BBC: “Haye will knockout both [Klitschko] brothers. I’m not impressed with those guys…They’re very ordinary. They ain’t special; they’re just lucky. Wladimir will be real easy for Haye.”

As it turns out, Haye was the one that was easily beaten, as Wladimir pounded out a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision over Haye in a fight where Haye spent a good portion of the time flopping on the canvas every chance he could get. It looked as if Haye were trying to get the referee to either take points away from Wladimir or have his disqualified for his occasional clinches and bumps. It looked laughable and made Haye seem more than a little pathetic.

After watching Haye get totally out classed by Wladimir, Hopkins had this to say to the dailymail.co.uk: “You can’t trash talk the way he did for two or three years and then not deliver. I don’t like to question any fighter’s heart. But to see him go in there and then keep flopping. I would spot him 20 lbs… Haye was given the stage, the opportunity, to fight his heart out. If you do that, even if you don’t win, you can come back. But as soon as he started flopping down on his knees I knew it was over.”

It was basically over by the 2nd round, as Haye was out of his league in this fight and didn’t have the courage to try and make a go of it by attacking Wladimir all out. Haye’s only chance of beating Wladimir was to get in close and flurry like he had done in wins over Enzo Maccarinelli and Audley Harrison. However, Haye didn’t want any part of letting his hands go and instead threw only pot shots for the 12 rounds.

Hopkins has a fight coming up in October against Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) at the Prudential Center, Newark, New Jersey. This is going to be an interesting fight for a couple of reason. Dawson is trained by Emanuel Steward, who also trains Wladimir. Steward has made a lot of changes to Dawson’s fighting style and has him using his jab more and boxing. Hopkins has problems against fighters that box and have fast hands. This could be a very hard fight for Hopkins to win because Dawson is so good defensively and isn’t someone that will just stand there the way that Roy Jones Jr did in his recent loss to Hopkins. Dawson also is capable of throwing more punches than Jean Pascal, a fighter that tried to beat Hopkins by pot shotting him in two consecutive fights.