Hopkins wants to fight Tarver after Dawson bout

By Boxing News - 07/31/2011 - Comments

Image: Hopkins wants to fight Tarver after Dawson boutBy Dan Ambrose: If WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) makes it past Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) on October 15th at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, the 46-year-old Hopkins will be targeting 42-year-old International Boxing Organization (IBO) cruiserweight champion Antonio Tarver (29-6, 20 KO’s) in a rematch.

Tarver and Hopkins fought five years ago with Hopkins winning a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 118-109, 118-109 and 118-109. Things have changed since then, both fighters are older and Tarver is coming off of an impressive 9th round stoppage of IBO cruiserweight champion Danny Green earlier this month on July 20th.

Hopkins wants to fight IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, but if that fight does come off, it’s going to have to wait until next year. Bute is likely to be facing former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in his final fight of 2011, and won’t have time to pencil in a fight against Hopkins until next year.

Hopkins and Tarver had this exchange on twitter:

THEREALBHOP BERNARD HOPKINS EX
@
@AntonioTarver aftr oct 15 LHW its cleaned up.. Ill b up there soon

AntonioTarver MagicMan 5X Champ
by THEREALBHOP
@THEREALBHOP I’m your biggest fan against Dawson and then we need to settle our business. One for the ages!!

THEREALBHOP BERNARD HOPKINS EX
@
@AntonioTarver i agree.

***

This is all well and good that Hopkins and Tarver are interested in fighting each other again, but Dawson could take all the interest out of this fight by beating Hopkins in October. The last thing that Hopkins should be doing right now is looking past Dawson and mapping out fights in the future. A loss for Hopkins against Dawson could turn a potential Hopkins-Tarver fight into nothing more than an old timer’s fight between two aging 40-year-olds.



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