By Scott Gilfoid: Bernard Hopkins sees tomorrow night’s match-up between IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (30-2, 22 KO’s) and WBA champion Mikkel Kessler (46-2, 35 KO’s) as being a pretty one-sided affair with Froch dominating Kessler and winning by a fairly lopsided decision. Hopkins doesn’t think Kessler has improved in the last three years, and he sees Froch as being able to dominate.

Hopkins said to Sky Sports “I don’t see that Kessler has got better in the last three years, so I’m going with Froch. I believe he’ll win it, it won’t be close, he’ll win at least eight out of 12 rounds.”

Hopkins BADLY wants to fight Froch if he gets past Kessler. He’s not really excited about fighting Kessler for some reason, but he definitely sees Froch as someone that can generate fan interest, whether that be in the United States or the UK.

Hopkins would likely have to agree to fight Froch in the UK for the fight to happen, and at a catchweight because Froch is unwilling to fight Hopkins at the full weight for the light heavyweight division. He feels that Hopkins would then rehydrate to 190, and thus putting Froch at a weight disadvantage of close to 20 pounds.

I don’t see what the big deal is. So what if Froch is giving away 20 pounds. He’s fighting a guy that’s nearly 50-years-old. At least you can give Hopkins some kind of advantage with a handicap with the weight because he’s nearing the half century mark.

It’s not as if Hopkins would use that weight to bully Froch in the clinches or overpower him because Hopkins hasn’t had a knockout win in 9 years since 2004. Why would Froch be worried about fighting a guy with a knockout drought like that and as old as he is?

I think Hopkins is wishing that Froch will beat Kessler more than knowing he’ll win. When you have a fighter that you badly want to win, as Hopkins clearly does with Froch, you tend to magnify his positives and minimize the negatives. In this case, Hopkins doesn’t see how wide open Froch is defensively and how slow he is, and how poor of an inside fighter he is.

Kessler is simply superior to Froch in every facet of the game. There’s not one area where Froch comes out ahead of Kessler. That’s why I think Hopkins is going to be miserable tomorrow might when things go badly for Froch with him losing by either a knockout or a fairly wide decision. My guess is Froch gets knocked out.