Hopkins: Floyd Mayweather is Not Taking Canelo Lightly

By Rick Reeno

IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins says Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26KOs) is taking WBC/WBA junior middleweight champion Saul "Canelo" Alvarez (42-0-1, 30KOs) very seriously. The fight, which is contracted for a catch-weight of 152-pounds, happens later tonight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Showtime Pay-Per-View will carry the card.

For weeks, Mayweather has been attacking Canelo's past opponents and downplaying his career accomplishments. The verbal attacks and some of Mayweather's televised antics are nothing more than mind games, says Hopkins.

"What Floyd is pointing out, as far as I can tell...I can't put words in his mouth or in his head, but he's pointing out things to make them second guess what they're thinking and what they think they've done. If I say to you - 'you fought this guy, you fought that guy, you fought that guy's brother.' That's just me telling you that you know you have doubts because you didn't fight qualified people. Floyd is not underestimating nobody because that's not in his makeup. He lives, whether you like or not, to show and prove that he can say and do whatever he likes and still go to the well - whether it's in training, or fighting in the ring," Hopkins told BoxingScene.com.

"He wants to show that I can drink Coca Cola, that I can eat this or eat that. As a matter of fact I can eat skittles and I can still go out there and beat you. But he ain't doing that all the time. He just ate it that second, or that minute, but he's not doing that all the time. So we get sucked into thinking that's him, but that's not him. That's him for the cameras. You think that he's coming to a gun fight without a gun and he's got five of them with the exra clip."