By John Hively

Bernard Hopkins showed his usual unsportsman-like conduct after he got his butt kicked by Joe Calzaghe last Saturday in Las Vegas. After the bout, he did his best to convince his audience that he'd won, that he had given Joe a boxing lesson, that the decision was a bad one. He refused to give the man, who had so obviously trounced him, any credit whatsoever for landing 232 times to the head and body over twelve-rounds.

 

This fight was a little more one-sided than the judges decreed, at least from my point of view. True, Hopkins was competitive. He floored Calzaghe in the first round with a right cross, and he won a few rounds afterwards; and a few other rounds were difficult to score. But he was out hit nearly two to one over the course of the fight.

 

The seventh, eighth and tenth rounds demonstrated how badly those 232 punches slowed 'The Executioner' down.

 

I gave Hopkins the opening round 10-8 based on his knockdown. During the early rounds, Hopkins counterpunched, but not all that effectively. In the second round, he landed a nice right cross. Hopkins was landing less than Joe, but Max Kellerman suggested he was landing more effective punches. The commentators repeated this throughout the fight, but I have my doubts that it was true. For example, Calzaghe landed a crackling left hook flush to Hopkins jaw in the second heat. If what Kellerman said was true, that all began to change in the third stanza, as Calzaghe began landing not only more punches than Bernard, but also clouts that were just as effective as anything landed by Hopkins, except for the right cross that floored Joe in the first.

 

Bernard’s primary offence was to throw one punch at a time, then clinch. Sometimes it seemed as though he was leading with his head. This tactic did not work very well.

 

In the fifth round, the Welshman landed a left-cross flush on Hopkins' face that visibly shook Bernard from head to toe. Joe landed that punch several times during the fight. By the end of the sixth round, Hopkins was behind on my card. At this point, I expected The Executioner to step up the tempo, take charge, and rally, like he did against Jermain Taylor. He didn’t. By the end of the eighth, Hopkins looked worn out, old, frayed. He was getting out-hit two to one. His punches were less and less effective.

On the other hand, Joe was still landing effective punches, looked fresh, and he was also connecting with a lot of his so-called less-than-effective shots. At the end of ninth round, Hopkins looked like a very weary warrior putting up a brave front.

 

Calzaghe was winning the tenth handily, but then he landed a light body blow on Hopkin’s abdomen. The top of Hopkins trunks stretched up over his belly button. Joe’s blow landed just below that, off to Hopkins right side. The light punch was not even close to the groin. Still Bernard collapsed, clutching his un-hit groin.  The Welshman stood there in disbelief and mocked him. The crowd booed Hopkins. It looked to me as if he needed a breather, that he went down on purpose, perhaps to avoid being stopped. That alone told me who was winning the fight. Bernard must have known that he was behind, that he was falling further behind, and that he needed to do something desperate to turn the tide.

Instead of coming out swinging in the tenth, he took a rest, because he needed it badly, and he didn’t have the energy to come out swinging. By then Hopkins had absorbed the vast majority of the 232 punches Calzaghe landed. They had worn him down (along with his forty-three years). If they were mostly ineffective, Bernard should have been winning at this point.

 

The last two rounds were anti-climatic. It was the same story as in the earlier heats, except that Hopkins finally came out swinging in the twelfth, although ineffectively. It was as if he knew he needed to win the round to have a chance to win the fight. At the end, Calzaghe looked as though he could easily go another five rounds, meaning Hopkins had not landed enough effective punches to slow him down.

 

After the bout, Hopkins put up a front: he whined, insisted the decision was a bad one, denied that he flopped on purpose in the tenth, and gave us the usual blather of a poor sportsman. But the truth had been laid out before us, in his tenth round flop, as he lay face down on the mat, giving the appearance of an exhausted and beaten down fighter because he had indeed taken too many effective punches.

 

I had the fight close, 116 to 113, seven rounds to three with two even, but I also think I was generous to 'The Executioner.' An observer might have given Calzaghe ten rounds, and I would not have complained. The truth of this was in the tenth round flop. That round was the real story of the fight, and who was landing the effective blows.

 

Bernard should retire. He doesn’t have anything to prove, not any more. He’s had a great career, established himself as a top twenty middle-weight of all time, and one of the best fighters of his generation. At the age of forty-three, it’s all downhill from here.