Hopkins "No Need To Fight Kovalev "

Hopkins didn't want to fight Dawson and there was no network/promoter hangup. I admire Hopkins for getting into the ring at his age but he needs a very limited opponent in front of him. Kovalev would probably put a severe beating on Hopkins because Hopkins has a good beard. The survival instinct is strong in Hopkins and Hopkins would give up all his belts before he would get into the ring with a beast like Kovalev.

 

When you say BHOP needs a limited opponent to cooperate with him to win, you are right.
Kovalev fits that description perfectly. Even moreso than Stevenson.

 

Stevenson is not as aggressive as Kovalev. Kovalev would spend every minute of every round trying to take Hopkins head off. Hopkins may be able to trick Stevenson into fighting a tactical fight, no chance of that with Kovalev.

 

ok

 

But uh he actually got in the ring with Dawson, twice no less. He may not have wanted to, but he could have very easily retired with his record after Pascal 2. How you extrapolate a blatant duck of Kovalev on the horizon from his history in that instance is baffling.

 

Hopkins had no other options but either fight Dawson, lose his belt or retire. If he had other options, he would not have fought Dawson at all, and Dawson was no killer like Kovalev. Hopkins has other options besides retiring or losing his belts in the case of Kovalev. I don't get into this "ducking" crap like a lot of you posters on here. Hopkins doesn't want to fight Kovalev and if I was in his shoes, I wouldn't want to fight him either.

 

He isn't becoming undisputed without that WBO belt, especially considering that it's being held by a fighter who is arguably #1 in the division, only behind the lineal champ, with majority of people thinking that he would beat the lineal champ. Hopkins isn't becoming undisputed without Kovalev.

 

But you are getting into the "he doesn't want it" crap. The main reason the fight wouldn't happen is politics, not anything to do with Hopkins protecting his health.

 

You have your opinion and I have mine.

 

The fight can't happen due to the cold war, but it seems like Hopkins is glad he has a built in excuse. Oh well, I don't like Stevenson much (after running for the hills from Kovalev), but I hope the guy pummels BHop in to retirement.

Also I don't think anybody in BHops shoes, 49 years old would want to fight a younger, strong, aggressive fighter like Kovalev, but nobody is going to listen to BHops trash talk when he's not going to fight him. Either fight Kovalev and trash talk all you want, before the fight and after (if you win), or don't say his name/ if asked then speak respect about him.

 

That's not the point.
This is a Al Haymon/BHOP strategy.

BHOP will be the man at LHW by holding 3-4 of the belts. He will be acknowledged as the #1 man at LHW.
Many high grossing potential fights can be leveraged off of this without bothering to include Kovalev's title.
It's a beautiful plan, and BHOP is executing the plan to perfection, maximizing his growing marketability.

 

If Hopkins didn't want the Dawson fight then he did a terrible job. He never tried to avoid Dawson when he was ordered to fight him, didn't pay him step aside money didn't appeal to the WBC to delay his mandatory like Vitali did with Stiverne, he did nothing to avoid it at all.

Then after the first fight Dawson and his promoter Gary Shaw said they would not rematch Hopkins even if the WBC ordered it. It was only after the fight was changed to a NC that they changed their mind and made the rematch. It was Dawson who tried to avoid the rematch not Hopkins.

Most seem to favour Stevenson over Hopkins yet Hopkins seems to be aiming towards unifying with Stevenson. Is this the actions of a fighter who ducks fighters? Doesn't seem like it to me.

While Hopkins has taken some easy fights recently and I'd even say Shumenov was cherry picked nothing Hopkins has done suggests he is avoiding Kovalev.

As for Kovalev he's the only fighter at 175lbs other than Dawson that I'm certain will beat Hopkins but it won't be down to his work rate. Everyone that seems to not understand Hopkins style seems to believe work rate will beat him. But that didn't work with Shumenov, Wright or Taver and it wasn't Dawson's work rate that beat Hopkins as he only threw 31 more punches in the rematch. Hopkins kills work rate, even Calzaghe threw 300 less than he often does.

What beats Hopkins is footwork combined with activity, this is why Calzaghe did so well, activity alone he can diffuse and Kovalev has very under rated foot work. He's never off balance, his foot placement and movement is much better than you'd expect from your average puncher, it's much better than Stevenson's. Kovalev's technique in general is very good, he doesn't telegraph punches at all. Overall I think Kovalev could be very special, only thing I'm not sure about is his defence, can he fight off the back foot as well as I think he could.

 

Like I've been saying, Hopkins would never get in the ring with Kovalev. Why should he, when there are still plenty of Iraqi, Kazakh, Haitian and Turk stiffs left to fight?