By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Bernard Hopkins (55-7-2, 32 KOs) is saying he’d like to see WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) dare to be great by moving up two divisions to fight him at light heavyweight (175) rather than Hopkins move down to middleweight or a catch-weight at super middleweight.
Hopkins points out that in June of 2006, he moved up two divisions to fight IBO light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver and he beat him by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 118-109, 118-109 and 118-109.
“I went from 160 to 175 to fight Tarver. Think about it. 60 to 75,” Hopkins said to Fighthub. “I did it. So Triple G, who I see as special. So why don’t these guys do what I did? I beat Tarver easily, so why are you babysitting these guys? Who at 160 right now are they saying they want to see him fight someone who is going to have a chance? He is a tough fight. No, I would never make 160. When I was at middleweight, I fought everybody.”
Hopkins feels that because he was willing and able to do that in his career when he was fighting at middleweight, then Golovkin should be able to do it as well. What Hopkins doesn’t point out is that once he made the move up in weight to 175 for the Tarver fight, he stayed that that weight despite there being no one exciting for him to fight at 175. The question is did Hopkins stay at 175 because it now too hard for him to lose the weight once he put it on?
It’s sometimes hard for fighters to lose muscle weight when they bulk up to fight in higher weight classes and then drop back down to their previous weight classes. So if Golovkin moves up all the way to 175 for just one fight against the 50-year-old Hopkins, he could potentially be messing up his system to make it more difficult for him to ever move back down to middleweight again. The last thing the 5’10” Golovkin needs is to be stuck at 175 or 168 for the remainder of his career simply because he bulked up in weight for just one payday fight against Hopkins.
Hopkins’ situation wasn’t good at the time he moved up from middleweight to light heavyweight. Hopkins had been beaten in back to back fights by Jermain Taylor in 2005, and it was pretty clear at that point that there was a no kind of the mountain at middleweight in Taylor taking over the division at that point. Hopkins’ situation back then wasn’t like Golovkin’s is now. Right now, Golovkin is totally dominating at 160 and is seen as the best fighter in the division. Hopkins didn’t have that when he moved up to light heavyweight to fight Tarver. Hopkins was in a bad situation where if he stayed at 160, he would have had to play second fiddle to Jermain Taylor, who clearly had his number.
As much as I’d like to see Hopkins and Golovkin fight each other, I can’t see Golovkin moving up two divisions to fight Hopkins at 175. I don’t think the money would be that great for Golovkin to take the fight and potentially mess up his system by gaining all that weight.
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