By Cliff Rold
If the consensus choice for best Light Heavyweight in the world, Chad Dawson, beat the living hell out of Bernard Hopkins (50-5-1, 32 KO), if he busted the Executioner up, made him bleed, sent him to the deck…
…Hopkins would be home free.
If Tomasz Adamek, lured to stay at Cruiserweight, had proved too strong and sent Bernard Hopkins into retirement short of a third World title…
…a collective shrug would have been generated.
The shrug, the home free, might not have come the night of those hypothetical contests. The visceral impact of those evenings would have lingered. It wouldn’t have taken long though for perspective to set in. In his mid-40s, Hopkins would have gotten what he has earned had younger, naturally a little big bigger men defeated him.
Hopkins would have received deference.
Great fighters get that when they age, their late losses not held against them. Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali, Rocky Marciano-Joe Louis, Joey Archer-Ray Robinson, Terry Norris-Ray Leonard; not a single one of the defeated in those fights is rated historically behind the man who defeated him.
Even accepting that Hopkins, unlike Ali, Louis, Robinson and Leonard, is still seen as one of the best active fighters in the world, foes like Dawson or Adamek are no risk propositions in terms of how Hopkins career is can or will be compared to other notable fistic figures. Win and it’s the latest affirmation of greatness. If he loses, his age will never be ignored as a component.
Age has its privileges that way. For the 45-year old Hopkins, the privileges are revoked this Saturday.
In just days, Hopkins will enter the ring with a man who is younger than him, who has competed in larger weight divisions for the bulk of each man’s careers, and yet he is the one man who
could potentially, by winning, hurt Hopkins’s historical standing.
Hopkins, just shy of seventeen years after their first encounter, has chosen to take a rematch with 41-year old former Middleweight, Super Middleweight, Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight titlist Roy Jones Jr. (54-6, 40 KO).
It’s not an easy fight to anticipate it’s hard to imagine a thrilling encounter now. They couldn’t produce thrilling when they were young. Jones-Hopkins I was a generally dull encounter between a Jones anticipated to be emerging towards stardom and a Hopkins viewed as a sturdy enough place to win a vacant IBF title.
All these years later, sturdy has proven special. Hopkins wound up winning the IBF title in 1995 after Jones vacated it the year before, defending it 20 times over the ensuing decade and unifying every available belt along the way. In 2006, he captured the popular claim to the Light Heavyweight title, defeating Jones’s eventual conqueror Antonio Tarver.
There have been those, recently including veteran boxing scribe Kevin Iole, who make the case that despite his early career loss to Jones, Hopkins should be viewed as the greater fighter. Iole is not alone and how Hopkins is rated in comparison to Jones, his chief generational rival, matters.
Hopkins is certainly viewed as the greater fighter, literally, in 2010. Jones was a physical marvel gifted with speed and power in his prime but who relied often on unorthodox approaches that were less successful as his reflexes left him. Hopkins is all schooling, a master of the craft whose fundamentals have kept him young despite the calendar.
Part of that is because Tarver isn’t the only man who has defeated Jones since knocking Roy out in 2004, the second of three Jones-Tarver contests. Jones enters this weekend 5-5 in his last ten outings, stopped three times including a first round stoppage against Danny Green in his most recent fight. Once seen as the pound-for-pound leader from most of the years between at least 1996 and 2003, Jones would struggle to rate amongst today’s top 100 active fighters.
Hopkins, in contrast, has managed not only to defeat Tarver but also Winky Wright and Kelly Pavlik versus a competitive decision loss to Joe Calzaghe in the last few years. ESPN, Ring Magazine, and BoxingScene all still rate Hopkins with the ten best overall fighters in the game. With so little to lose in tackling tough foes at his age, it’s hard to fathom why Hopkins wouldn’t continue doing so.
Seriously, can Hopkins gain anything from a win over Jones?
Actually he could.
One of the pro-Hopkins arguments in comparing him to Jones has been that, in 1993, Jones was much closer to the fighter he would peak as than Hopkins was. A defeat of Jones now, when Hopkins is seen as holding the advantages, could be argued as a sort of nullification of the earlier victory. It might not be an entirely logical argument, but the fact is no one ever saw Jones and Hopkins, each on their best professional day.
It could have happened.
It should have happened.
It didn’t and this Saturday is what’s left.
If Jones, who has looked legless and listless for years can manage what would be an upset, this rivalry is rewritten all over again. It’s one thing to argue Hopkins not being professionally ready in 1993…he’d have no excuses now for defeat.
He’d have nowhere to stand in comparison to Jones ten and twenty years from now then behind. In that sense the stakes favor Jones.
After all, despite Hopkins many accomplishments, it’s not like Jones was without his own or lacked for longevity. Jones was not Donald Curry or Mike Tyson, physically brilliant for a few short years. Prior to his 2004 loss to Tarver, Jones was 23-1 in major title fights, with eighteen defenses of a single, unified, or Ring Magazine title across three weight classes.
Hopkins can point and say that, of the five men who have defeated Jones, he has easily bested two (Glenn Johnson and Tarver) and was far more competitive with a Calzaghe each lost a decision to. He’s certainly been very good for longer than Jones.
Jones though can point to his dominance up to the point where he mastered Heavyweight John Ruiz in 2003 as always being a step ahead of Hopkins. He was almost as good a Light Heavyweight champ as Hopkins was a Middleweight leader and that was Jones’s third weight class. Jones walked through quality fighters like Virgil Hill, Montell Griffin (the second time), and James Toney while Hopkins was struggling to be noticed.
Jones can say he was better when both were very good and it’s a strong trumping argument.
If a Jones perceived as having very little left can also be better than Hopkins, what would there be left to argue about?
Weekly Ledger
But wait, there’s more…
Maidana-Cayo KO: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=26422
Dirrell/Wonjongkam Report Card: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=26457
Picks of the Week: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=26505
Cliff’s Notes…
Having read more than one call for the suspension of Arthur Abraham this week because of his striking Andre Dirrell after Dirrell slipped to the floor, it’s worth adding to the conversation the following: are you kidding?
If this were an unusual foul, it might be worth considering but it’s got a long history of occurrence. Hitting a man when they are down sucks, but it’s a heat of the moment foul which is punished conditionally, doesn’t even always result in a loss, and has not in recollection led to suspensions before.
Using more recent examples, Jr. Middleweight great Terry Norris did it in wins (famously blasting even Ray Leonard foul) and losses and was DQ’d multiple times; it was a signature of his career; never suspended.
Nigel Benn did it egregiously against Iran Barkley, after flooring his man with a punch, and won the fight with a first round three-knockdown rule stoppage. No suspension afterwards.
Riddick Bowe got a “No Contest” ruling versus Buster Mathis and Roy Jones got an immediate rematch against Montell Griffin. What Abraham did, whether it was ‘worse’ or ‘not as bad’ as some of those examples, is a debate of degree and one won’t find wide chasms of difference in any of it.
Oh, and most of the foulers were saucy about it afterwards as well, something else they share with Abraham. It’s hard to remember anyone calling for suspensions in any of those cases, though Alex Wallau got mighty pissed at Benn on the air.
In other words, given past experience, the punishment is what it should be. Abraham takes an earned loss on his record and some harm to his reputation for now. Anything more would set a new precedent which isn’t needed.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com
