Hopkins still thinks Mayweather fight is possible

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IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KO’s) appeared on ESPN last night to talk about his future plans of trying to get a unification fight against WBC 175lb champion Adonis Stevenson (23-1, 20 KO’s) and then a big money bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Hopkins says he feels that he has a good chance of getting the Mayweather fight if he can get past Stevenson in his next bout in Canada later this year.

That’s a big ‘if’ because Stevenson is nothing like the last three fighters – Tavoris Cloud, Karo Murat and Beibut Shumenov – that Hopkins has beaten recently. Stevenson would no doubt beat all of those guys except he would have likely knocked all of them out early instead of having them go the full distance with him the way Hopkins has been forced to do


“Floyd wants to be 50-0 before he retires, and I believe being 50-years-old, I think 50-50 proposition sounds like a good connection, a good hook, a good title. Anything is possible as far as Floyd Mayweather. He said on a tweet and also on the internet that anything is possible, but let him take care of [Marcos] Maidana first. When you have two of the best minds in boxing that love winning and breaking records, I believe it would be the biggest urban fight that would cross racial, religious lines in the world. At the end of the day options are on my side.”

A fight between Mayweather and Hopkins likely wouldn’t do nearly as well as rematches for Mayweather against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Miguel Cotto. Those are much bigger fights in my view than having Mayweather fight a 50-year-old fighter with a 30 pound weight and a 5 inch height advantage over him in Hopkins. That’s too much of a size advantage for Hopkins, and he doesn’t have the fan base to make it worthwhile for Mayweather to waste one of his remaining fights to take a fight against him. I could see this fight doing similar numbers as Mayweather’s bout against Robert Guerrero.

If Hopkins were 20 years younger, it would be a decent but not great fight. But I don’t see fans getting excited at watching Mayweather fight a 50-year-old fighter, who comes across as desperate for the fight with him.

Hopkins’ chances of beating Stevenson are very, very poor. Stevenson easily beat the last good fighter that Hopkins fought in Chad Dawson. Hopkins lost to Dawson by a 12 round decision in 2012. Since then, Hopkins has taken three easy fights against weak opponents in Cloud, Murat and Shumenov. Those aren’t great fighters, and you can make a strong argument that guys like Andrzej Fonfara , Stevenson’s next opponent for May 24th, would have beaten those three fighters as well. Hopkins proved nothing in beating Cloud, Shumenov and Murat, other than he can do what likely a number of other contenders in the division could do. Hopkins really should have gone back and fought Dawson a third time to try and avenge his loss rather than fighting guys like Cloud, Shumenov and Murat.

“This is a fight where I cannot underestimate him,” Hopkins said of Stevenson. “He better not underestimate me. I do see things I can expose. There’s a couple of things I see.”

Stevenson can do everything that Hopkins can do at this point, but with much better speed, power and with a far higher punch output. Stevenson will no doubt make Hopkins look like an old man when they meet each other at the end of the year.
The only question is will Hopkins retire if he loses to Stevenson or will he hang around and still call out Mayweather? I wouldn’t be surprised if Hopkins is still calling out Mayweather even if he gets knocked out by Stevenson.


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