By Ryan Burton

This past Saturday, BoxingScene.com caught up with Golden Boy Promotion's shareholder and future Hall of Fame inductee Bernard Hopkins.  We touched on a lot of topics including WBC/WBA/IBF/IBO middleweight champion Gennady "GGG" Golovkin's March 18th narrow points victory over Daniel Jacobs. 

The fight was the first in Golovkin's career where he fought for twelve full rounds.

Golovkin was the mandatory challenger for the WBC middleweight title prior to when Alvarez defeated Miguel Cotto to capture the green belt in November, 2015. Golden Boy worked out an agreement with Golovkin's promoter K2 Promotions to allow Canelo to face Amir Khan last May before facing GGG.

After stopping Khan, Alvarez elected to drop the belt and move back down to 154 pounds where he captured the WBO title by stopping Liam Smith this past September.  Golden Boy Promotion's CEO Oscar De La Hoya defended the move stating that they needed more time to properly build up the event and didn't want to be handcuffed by the WBC's time limit.  De La Hoya earmarked September 16th, 2017 (Mexican Independence Day weekend) as the perfect timeframe for the fight. 

Hopkins agreed that the Golovkin-Jacobs fight was close but felt the New Yorker had done enough to leave the ring with the victory. More importantly, he believes that Jacobs laid out the perfect plan to upend the unbeaten knockout artist.

"I had Daniel by at least split decision but I wouldn't have been upset if it was a draw. Worst case scenario and I went on the record the next day speaking with a couple of reporters that I believe that Daniel Jacobs won the fight by split decision but worst case scenario, worst case scenario, I wouldn't have been upset if it was a draw because I believe that he deserved the benefit of the doubt - not because he was brave, not because he beat cancer, none of those things - but the way he fought," Hopkins told BoxingScene.com.

"There were some rounds that were so close where I believe they literally had to close their eyes and mark a box to say who won that round. Jacobs fought such a patient, technical and poised fight, even after the knockdown, he set up a blueprint for the next man - Canelo, to come along and study that after he takes care of his business on Cinco de Mayo, May 6th - and come along and realize that Triple G isn't getting better. He is getting comfortable.  You get comfortable mentally first and then you get comfortable physically and then you fall off. Most long reigning champions do."

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