Comments Thread For: Hopkins Explains Checkmate on Stevenson, Kovalev Deal

[$Bullsfam$]

Yeah, I've seen the article pretty much every time this gets brought up now. Showtime didn't approve Hopkins/Kovalev, and Kovalev's people went for Cleverly since that offer was waiting.

Either way it all worked out for the best. If Hopkins would have beat him then it would of just been like "meh, Hopkins does it again..." it wouldn't have been as big for B-Hop as it could be now that Kovalev has built himself up nicely. Even a win for Kovalev is bigger as the fight is bigger now. He's getting paid more!

I'm wondering why the hell the IBF keeps rushing all these mandatory's on Hopkins. Jesus Christ the man just gave you 2 charity cases.

[bojangles1987]

Either way it all worked out for the best. If Hopkins would have beat him then it would of just been like "meh, Hopkins does it again..." it wouldn't have been as big for B-Hop as it could be now that Kovalev has built himself up nicely. Even a win for Kovalev is bigger as the fight is bigger now. He's getting paid more!

I'm wondering why the hell the IBF keeps rushing all these mandatory's on Hopkins. Jesus Christ the man just gave you 2 charity cases.

I don't mind because the IBF enforces mandatories on everyone. They're not clean, but they are the best of the bunch

[$Bullsfam$]

I don't mind because the IBF enforces mandatories on everyone. They're not clean, but they are the best of the bunch

That's a good point and a good practice which should be enforced at 147 and 154 in the stacked divisions but it just gets annoying when your grasping at straws digging from the very bottom to find an opponent and then rushing Hopkins to make a decision. I mean damn it's not like he's Floyd, Canelo (before Lara), Garcia and fights whoever he wants.

Hopkins doesn't need any more Salsa's on his resume :weed5:

[Porter's Dad]

Pretty damn funny. About 6 weeks ago, Hopkins was pledging loyalty to Showtime and Haymon after Scheafer left.

Now he's gone to HBO and airing Haymon's tactics to the world

[MDPopescu]

I know this was right at the beginning of the cold war too but I don't remember showtime turning it down but I do remember posters saying it would be impossible anyway because of the HBO beef. They could of though. I just remember an article where I believe it was Kovalev's promoter saying he fought Cleverly because it was a quicker title shot rather then wait for a fight with Hopkins that wasn't even guaranteed because of all the bad blood. I'm not sure if Kovalev had an HBO deal at this point.

It was precisely Showtime which didn't want the Hopkins vs Kovalev fight -- at least Hopkins told that to the press.
At that point, Kovalev wasn't signed with HBO -- he signed for the Cleverly fight.
The present spectacular "twist of fate" mainly resulted from GBP's will to return to HBO with a view to firmly establish the Canelo vs Cotto fight on Cinco de Mayo 2015 -- which is a huge promotional challenge.

[Mr. Philadel]

By Rick Reeno - Back on July 2nd, BoxingScene.com ran an article where IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32KOs) revealed his intention to face WBO champion Sergey Kovalev (25-0-1, 23KOs) in an HBO televised unification.

Very few people took the article seriously. Almost everyone in the industry expected Hopkins to face WBC champion Adonis Stevenson (24-1, 20KOs) in the fall.

For most of 2013, HBO was building up a unification fight between Kovalev and Stevenson.

Earlier this year, Stevenson jumped ship to rival network Showtime, with the obvious goal of facing Hopkins, who at that point was exclusively fighting on their network. Kathy Duva of Main Events, who felt confident that she reached an agreement with promoter Yvon Michel for a Stevenson-Kovalev unification on HBO, filed a federal lawsuit against Michel, Stevenson, Showtime, Stevenson's manager Al Haymon and former Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer.

Stevenson made his Showtime televised debut on May 24th, and won a twelve round unanimous decision over Andrzej Fonfara.

At the time of the BoxingScene article, nearly six weeks after Stevenson's Showtime debut, Hopkins confirmed that not a single "serious" conversation had taken place to make a fall unification with Stevenson. [Click Here To Read More]

The icing on the cake is when I expose Kovalev. That's the real icing on the cake," Hopkins said.

"I'm not going to do anything where I haven't thought about it physically and mentally. I don't operate like that. And I'll tell you this - I will go down as one of the fighters who never, never ducked anybody."

proud to call this man my ALL TIME FAV!!

@ Team Stevenson....BHop is noone's sucker....shame on them lames...Uncle Al should've knew better....props to Eric Gomez though, dude don't get enough credit for holding it down over at GBP imo....salute!!

[MDPopescu]

Pretty damn funny. About 6 weeks ago, Hopkins was pledging loyalty to Showtime and Haymon after Scheafer left.

Now he's gone to HBO and airing Haymon's tactics to the world :lo1:

Business is tricky sometimes...
Hopkins was supposed to lean towards the "Floyd/Schaefer/Haymon project"...
Schaefer failed to buyout GBP from Oscar and Hopkins holds 5% of the shares.
Therefore Hopkins took the business decision to stick with Oscar and also protect his own business status within GBP -- hence the Kovalev fight on HBO.

[The Big Dunn]

Great interview.

Hopkins played it brilliantly.

[Check_hooks]

No one is bringing up the shady **** SHO did to him

BHop was mislead by them and was blindsided when they say they weren't gonna give him his guarantee cuz they needed some more money for the undercard

Is SHO really that much in financial trouble?

They've made horrible business decisions and the writings on the wall

[Dle]

Let the wars an games begin...Oscar can still fight.

Ok, this is really an Oscar retaliation move against Haymon and Showtime. He's using his Rooks as Pawn for person vendetta. B-Hops still a draw with a title and since Canelo may not be so sellable after Lara.s schooling Oscar must flip-flop to stay in business. Not mad at cha" bcuz either fight is big. Go Oscar go!