Bernard Hopkins: Contender Emeritus?
y Cliff Rold
Atop most of the notable non-sanctioning body ratings at Light Heavyweight, two men occupy the top slots: Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson. Fightnews, SecondsOut, and the U.K.-based Boxing Monthly have Hopkins currently at the number one spot; Ring Magazine and ESPN have Dawson up top.
One of them clearly belongs.
The other one signed for a rematch with Roy Jones Jr. earlier this month and warrants a closer look.
Thankfully for history buffs, and even they were among those who couldn’t get past the absurdity of Zsolt Erdei’s place as lineal champion, Erdei’s decision to return to the Light Heavyweight division after vacating his WBO belt to pursue Cruiserweight honors doesn’t undo the vacancy he left behind at 175 lbs. The sole link he had to the lineage of the crown, traced to Virgil Hill’s 1996 win over Henry Maske, was severed in November 2009.
The popular claim to Light Heavyweight supremacy was laid to rest even earlier last year. When he elected to retire, Joe Calzaghe took the Ring Magazine title with him. That was the claim linked to Roy Jones’s unification of the WBC, WBA and IBF belts from 1997-99. It was also, in terms of talent, always the superior line of champions. Jones, Antonio Tarver, Glen Johnson, and Bernard Hopkins all took their turns.
Today, whether one looks purely to the lineage or not for champions, the sign above the Light Heavyweight division should read “vacant.”
Dawson (29-0, 17 KO) being near the peak of the class in anyone’s ratings makes perfect sense. The 27-year old, currently holding an interim claim to the WBC belt, and having previously volunteered to abandon the WBC and IBF belts in pursuit of higher profile challenges, has done almost everything which could be asked of him. Since 2007, he has picked up five high quality wins, four of them without dispute.
In February 2007, Dawson came off the floor late and won between eight and ten rounds on all cards against future Cruiserweight king and current Heavyweight hopeful Tomasz Adamek (39-1, 27 KO). In 2008 and 09, he squared off with Glen Johnson (49-13-2, 33 KO), Antonio Tarver (27-6, 19 KO) in consecutive outings, and then Johnson again. All four wins came via unanimous decision; only the first Johnson fight, a violent classic, was remotely close.
The first three of those five wins came while both the Ring and lineal claims to the crown were still in effect. The second Tarver fight came after the February 2009 retirement of Calzaghe. The second Johnson fight, November 7 of last year, came just one week before Erdei elected to vacate at Light Heavyweight.
Dawson, having not fought since, and having not had the opportunity to face either Calzaghe or Erdei, has not yet had the opportunity to cement a claim to the Light Heavyweight crown.
He has earned the right to do so.
Has Hopkins (50-5-1, 32 KO) truly done enough, at Light Heavyweight, to maintain being the man who decides whether or not he gets there?
When he elected to come back from retirement, initially in 2007 but ultimately not until 2008, Heavyweight Vitali Klitschko caused waves in the division by invoking his status as the WBC’s ‘emeritus’ mandatory. Basically, the ‘emeritus’ status meant Klitschko could do whatever he wanted for presumably as long as he wanted only to be guaranteed a title shot on demand whenever he wanted it. It was a situation that drew guffaws from the masses.
Similar logic may be at work in labeling Hopkins one of the world’s top two Light Heavyweights, even if it’s not referred to that way. To be fair, Hopkins’s twenty title defenses at Middleweight and continued successes well into middle age make him one of the game’s living legends. He must be assumed as a world class threat until someone proves he’s not.
No one has done it yet.
However, regarding him as still a threat runs into some realities that make Hopkins as a top two Light Heavyweight objectively hard to swallow. Since moving up from Middleweight to topple Tarver in 2006, Hopkins has won only against the men he spent a decade dominating.
Middleweights.
Tarver is, in fact, the only man Hopkins has faced at Light Heavyweight who was active in the Light Heavyweight division immediately before meeting Hopkins.
In four fights since Tarver, Hopkins has gone 3-1, defeating Winky Wright (then a leading Middleweight contender), losing a competitive outing to Calzaghe (then Super Middleweight champ), and then decisioning Kelly Pavlik (then and now the Middleweight king) and Enrique Ornelas (two fights earlier a loser in a WBC Middleweight eliminator).
Also important in considering the question at hand, between Pavlik and Ornelas was an almost fourteen month layoff. With that sort of time off, and over three and half years without facing a rated Light Heavyweight, are exceptions being made for Hopkins in considering his place in the division?
Because they go beyond ratings and actually award the distinction of champion, and because in most cases Ring’s distinction lines up with the best claim to title lineage (Flyweight being the lone exception currently), Ring’s take on the situation was requested through their Editor-in-Chief Nigel Collins.
Asked if Hopkins historical standing was a factor in Ring’s current rating of number two at 175, Collins responded that “The Ring does not take a fighter’s historic standing into consideration when evaluating his ranking in a particular weight class. Results within the division are the main factor in all divisional rankings. Any fighter weighing more than 168 pound and less than 200 is a light heavyweight. Therefore, despite the fact that Bernard Hopkins’ bouts with Kelly Pavlik and Winky Wright (both of who weighed 170 pounds) were at catchweight, they were still light heavyweight fights.”
Further asked what it would take for Hopkins to drop lower in their ratings given his wins since 2006, lengthy layoff between Pavlik and Ornelas, and choice of Ornelas and Jones as consecutive opponents, Collins further replied, “Hopkins could drop in the ratings at any time--the same way he went from number one to number two following Chad Dawson’s second win over Glen Johnson. Hypothetically, Hopkins could drop again if contenders below him score significant wins. Right now, Jean Pascal, Tavoris Cloud, and Yusaf Mack are well positioned to do just that, but everything depends on what happens inside the ring.”
At the least it can be noted that, in signing to fight Jones, Hopkins has settled on a foe that has clearly been active at Light Heavyweight. The revenge factor, even if only for pride, is somewhat understandable given Hopkins’s loss to Jones in 1993 and years of rhetorical battle between the two.
However, Jones has fallen from most ratings after his first round knockout loss to Danny Green at Cruiserweight last December and, at 5-5 since 2004, Jones can’t point to a what could be considered a major win since his first 2003 struggle with Tarver.
Asked for his take on whether Hopkins should drop lower than the top two, ESPN’s Dan Rafael (who, like Ring, compiles comprehensive divisional ratings) answered “not yet” though he noted that, also like Ring, he’d recently dropped Hopkins below Dawson.
Ring’s web editor, Doug Fischer, addressed the Light Heavyweight ratings in his mailbag on January 15th. “It’s a free country, so Jones and Hopkins are free to beat on each other if they want, and fans are free to ignore them. The only thing I’ll ask of Hopkins (and the esteemed editorial board at THE RING) is to drop from that No. 2 spot in the magazine’s 175-pound ratings. I don’t want to diss Glen Johnson, but part of me is rooting for Yusaf Mack to win their fight on Jan. 30, so the Road Warrior will drop from the No. 3 spot. That way, if No. 4-rated Tarver doesn’t fight by mid-May, he’ll be dropped for being inactive for one year and there’s a possibility that the proposed summer matchup of Dawson and Jean Pascal could be for the vacant RING light heavyweight title. Fight fans deserve a real light heavyweight showdown and a real 175-pound champ. Dawson-Pascal could give us both.”
Johnson-Mack has since been reset for February 5th due to the cancellation of Shane Mosley-Andre Berto. Pascal-Dawson may or may not be able to occur over the summer due to injuries the WBC champion Pascal sustained last year in his second contest against Adrian Diaconu, though recent signs are positive.
Should Dawson-Pascal be the place where a new ‘real’ champion is crowned?
The current divisional ratings at BoxingScene, compiled by this author, have Dawson and Pascal rated at numbers one and two (followed by undefeated IBF titlist Tavoris Cloud). The answer from this corner is yes.
It is understandable if some argue that these top three might be a case of jumping the gun.
Neither Pascal nor Cloud is as accomplished in their careers as the three men rated directly beneath them (Hopkins, Johnson, and Tarver). The preference for them here, over their veteran counterparts, comes from favoring Pascal and Cloud for recent wins in the division over rated contenders.
The most recent official win over a serious Light Heavyweight contender for the veterans came at Tarver’s hands in April 2008, prior to his losses to Dawson, against Clinton Woods.
Since that Tarver win, even while plagued with far too much inactivity for a fighter in his 20s, the exciting Cloud (20-0, 18 KO) has gone 2-0 against former titlists Julio Gonzalez and Clinton Woods, the latter for the then-vacant vacant IBF belt.
Pascal (25-1, 16 KO), following a Super Middleweight title loss to Carl Froch in December 2008, has won four times with the last three all at 175 lbs. A thrilling win over the then-undefeated Diaconu in June 2009 for the WBC belt was followed with a stoppage of faded former titlist Silvio Branco and another decision over Diaconu before the year was out.
Hopkins being rated over either Pascal or Cloud is a case which can be made by pointing out that, Middleweights or not, Wright and Pavlik were both excellent fighters regardless of weight. The dominance of those wins cannot be easily discarded. Losing to Calzaghe, who like Hopkins is destined shortly for the Hall of Fame, in a close fight is nothing to hold against him either. And, it can be pointed out, Hopkins beat a better and younger Tarver than Dawson did and with more ease.
There is also the argument that Hopkins is, well, he’s Bernard Hopkins. At 45, if he wants to take a little longer off than others, he’s earned the right. In an era where three fights is a busy schedule for a year, his layoff means less than it might have in more active eras.
None of this answers the implications of the layoff combined with the Ornelas and Jones fight coming back to back, along with previous public dismissals of a Dawson fight as not worth his economic while. It appears for now that Hopkins isn’t really interested in the thick of the 175 lb. hunt. Stranger things have happened than the seemingly shot Jones upsetting Hopkins to make this all moot.
Strange hasn’t happened as yet.
That means, for now, the question remains: is regard for Hopkins as a top Light Heavyweight in 2010 a case of ‘emeritus’ or merit?
