He fought a boring fight against Calzaghe. You could argue that he won, fine.
Yes it was boring to watch but that was the correct strategy against Calzaghe. Calzaghe's main weapon is his workrate, so bhops plan was to clinch, tie up and cut that output in half. And he nearly won by doing exactly that, only if he would have had the stamina himself to throw more punches in the last few rounds.
He beat Pavlik in October 2008.
Then he fought Enrique Ornelas before fighting Jones. That fight was awful too against a lackluster opponent.
Enrique was a tune up fight and it wasn't actually a bad fight to watch. Bhop stayed in the pocket and pretty much fought him toe to toe. Further it was a free fight (on ESPN) and he donated his purse to charity so I don't know what you expect from a free tune up fight.
I give him credit for taking on Pascal but someone that's a defensive minded fighter, even more so at 46, I'd be shocked if he was on the attack much in this fight. He fights in the clinch more than anything now.
I'm not arguing this is going to be a good fight to watch or that hopkins is going to win.
I say he's not serious about fighting because he beat Pavlik (10lbs over the weight limit that he was fighting in at the time)
Hopkins was the 175 pound champ and came down 5 pounds in weight to fight pavlik, who came up 4 pounds from his catchweight fight of 166 pounds with Taylor. It was a meet in the middle fight, hence the catchweight. Further Pavlik was a 4-1 favorite and most predicted hopkins would get knocked out. On top of that, the extra four pounds kelly weighed proved to be a none issue, being that kelly weighed in well over 180 pounds in his last fight against Martinez and even before Kelly fought Hopkins, they were saying they were going to move up in weight because 160 pounds was too difficult for kelly to make. And on top of that, kelly and bernard are the same size, they are like long lost twins:
and talked a bunch of crap about who he will or would fight but they never happen.
Which I already broke down so I don't know why you bring this up. It's not his fault he coudln't fight adamek because HBO could not approve it yet. It's not his fault Haye didn't want to fight him.
I say he's not serious about fighting because fighting twice in 2 years and pricing yourself out of every other fight that he could've had isn't serious to me. People blasted Angulo for not taking the money to fight Martinez but BHOP has done it more than a couple times. I can't blame bhop at his age but it's still a double standard to me.
Ok, already went over this. He didn't price himself out against Adamek HBO could not approve it at the time, it didn't have to do with money it had to do with HBO not being able to sign the fight because they had no idea what their budget was going to be. As far as Dawson, HBO didn't want Dawson to fight Hopkins, not because of money, because they thought the ratings would be better against someone else.
As it was, Bhop has fought fighters at a disadvantage since his losses to Taylor. I know you will disagree but I haven't been impressed with him since beating DLH
wow ok that borders on haterism. So he gets no credit for moving up two weight classes at 41 years old and schooling the man and ring champ at light heavyweight in Antonio Tarver? He doesn't get credit for Pavlik? Come on man, those were ass whoopings in fights he was supposed to lose.
