I made the same mistake and thought Pavlik would outwork him. atsch A few months ago I was even thinking that Pascal had a shot to win because of the movement and power. Common sense hit me a few days ago though, and I was sure that Hopkins would win this. You could see it at the press conference that Pascal was in over his head. Add to that the fact that he gets tired later in fights, and there you have it. You can never judge Hopkins by his last fight.
I'm happy to eat my words about Hopkins. I've been a major critic of his wins against legitimate LHW's since Tarver, but this performance was up there for his career overall. Don't rate Pascal overly highly, but thought he would be active enough to keep the pace at a high tempo and was too big and strong to succumb to Hopkins bullying him around (as he had been able to do against smaller fighters). Never thought I'd say this about a Hopkins fight, but this was pretty entertaining with minimal clinching and no oscar-award perfomances. Totally outworked him on both the inside and outside.