By Dan Ambrose: IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KOs) thinks he’s going to make history next week in his unification fight against WBO champion Sergey Kovalev (25-0-1, 23 KOs) at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Hopkins, 49, thinks his years of clean living will help him beat back the younger and stronger 31-year-old Kovalev in this fight.
Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya says Hopkins hasn’t shown him any signs of aging or slowing down, and he believes he’s capable of beating Kovalev, even though Hopkins hasn’t faced a really good fighter since his loss to Chad Dawson two years ago.
Hopkins has won his last three fights against Karo Murat, Beibut Shumenov and Tavorius Cloud. You can make a strong argument that those three guys would be wiped with ease by Kovalev. We just saw Artur Beterbiev do a far better job of beating Cloud than Hopkins did by stopping him in just 2 rounds.
“I’m going to make history,” Hopkins said.
“He [Hopkins] hasn’t shown me any signs of slowing down,” De La Hoys said via Pressofatlanticcity.com. “As a matter of fact, I think he’s got more punching power and speed than ever. He’s just a freak of nature.”
Hopkins with more power and speed at 49 than he had in his 20s? I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense. Hopkins isn’t Benjamin Button. He’s not aging backwards. The fact that Hopkins hasn’t scored a knockout in 10 years suggests that he’s not getting more powerful despite what De La Hoya says about him throwing with more power.
If Hopkins truly had more power than he did earlier in his career then he would have stopped Dawson, Murat, Cloud and Shumenov, wouldn’t he?
On November 8th, I think we’re going to see that Hopkins is the same guy that Dawson easily beat two years ago. Kovalev is going to put hands on him and put Hopkins totally on the defensive for the entire fight for as long as it lasts.
If Hopkins does choose to trade with Kovalev, then this fight will likely end early with Hopkins getting knocked out. He may say he’s an alien, but I believe he’s going to look very much like an aging human in this fight.
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