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The IBF light heavyweight belt is on offer tonight at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall as Karo Murat of Germany challenges Philadelphia based Champion Bernard Hopkins.
At first blush Murat, 25-1-1 (15), seems to be unqualified for the task and further review confirms that but a look at the IBF light heavyweight top 10 rankings shows that Murat at #2 seems a world beater compared to the other names in the top ten: Andrezej Fonfara, Eduard Gutknecht, Cedric Agnew, Dmitry Sukhotskiy, Doudou Ngumbu…etc, etc, etc.
Murat, who was initially to fight Hopkins this past Summer, held the European middleweight strap during 2008-2009 then graduated to something called the WBO Intercontinental light heavyweight title before getting stopped in a WBO light heavy eliminator by future WBO champ Nathan Cleverly in 2010.
The Iraq born fighter got right back on the horse to capture the vaunted IBF Intercontinental trophy in 2011 only to get a draw against Gabriel Campillo in an IBF title eliminator later that year.
However, a 2012 stoppage victory over someone named Sandro Siproshvili, who had gone 3-7 in his prior ten bouts, luckily qualified Murat for a world title opportunity.
So, what we have is a Hopkins opponent who, has not fought in a year and a half, has been knocked out by Nathan Cleverly and only managed a draw against Gabriel Campillo.
There’s a reason that rumour of a huge showdown between Hopkins and Floyd Mayweather has been bandied about this week, rather than after the Murat bout.
The only thing that makes Hopkins vs. Murat even a wee bit interesting is “The Alien/The Executioner” is 48 years old and at some point he’ll lose his reflexes and could this be the night that occurs?
Because that’s what it would take for Murat to walk out of Boardwalk Hall with the IBF belt around his waist.
As always, the way to beat the elder version of Bernard is to follow the Calzaghe plan, minus getting knocked on your ass in the first round; set a fast pace that Hopkins can’t match and keep it up.
Murat is unlikely to have the skills and experience to pull this off and we will undoubtedly witness a classic, slow tempo Hopkins title defense in which Bernard keeps the pace down and picks his spots to launch just enough jabs and lead right hands to put the challenger on the defensive, going inside to grind Murat down with body shots and wrestling.
The undercard brightens things up a bit as WBO middleweight king Petey Quillin, 29-0 (21), faces challenger Gabriel Rosado, 21-6 (13), a light middleweight who, because of his lack of a concussive punch, keeps getting top opportunity at 160 pounds.
Rosado is just the kind of nearly man that Quillin has faced since beating an ancient Winky Wright last year and we should expect a WBO title retention, which will likely continue until Quillln gets KO’d in a unification with the massive punching WBA ruler Gennady Golovkin.
