Boxing Preview: Hopkins – Taylor II

For the past twelve years Bernard Hopkins has broken records as the reigning pound for pound undisputed middleweight champion of the world but that all changed July 16th, 2005. Bernard faced Jermain Taylor and had his belts handed down via a twelve round split decision. Thus we

come to the end of the year and one of the most anticipated rematches of the year.

Hated by networks, promoters, fans and the media, Bernard Hopkins has been scorned, but amazingly he has commanded and recieved respect from fighters across the globe. He’s defeated every mandantory opponant that has come his way. He’s also blasted out some of the more respected tacticians that the division has had to offer, not to mention two of the best fighters in the world who thought that they could move up and outbox Hopkins in order to try and take from him what he values most; his titles and his reputation. They failed. No one that he has every faced can say that they have actually beaten Hopkins outside of Roy Jones Jr and in review that fight was’nt as one sided as HBO’s commentators want you to think that it was.

After the Jones fight, Hopkins went on a merciless campaign of destroying opponents systematically and tactically round by round for over twelve years, amassing all of the major title belts. But Jermain Taylor is now wearing them. On paper, Taylor is now the WBA, WBC and WBO Middleweight Champion of the World. He can thank the media and judge Duane Ford for his paper status. Not boxing enthusiasts. Not Bernard Hopkins. Not even the majority of Taylor’s fans as they probably question his win and his championship as much as he and his corner were. In short, Taylor is not deserving of his current championship status.

The thing is, I’ve been a fan of Hopkins since the first time I saw him back in 1991 or maybe it was 1992.
I truly can’t remember when the fight was, but it was around about that time and the first time that I saw him fight I was hooked. But it was’nt until after Bernard lost the Jones fight that I started completely grasping the concept of who Bernard Hopkins was and what he was really all about. The same goes for Taylor; I’ve been a fan of the boy since first seeing him and I have a good grasp of who he is and what he’s all about. There’s a big difference between those two and it aint just two handfuls of years.

A man like Hopkins only has a few things in his life that define him and those few things equate to his whole being inside and out. We all know the stories of Bernard, most of us that are fans know them like the back of our hands because he is more than happy to recite them at the drop of a hat. A street thug, rising up from poverty and struggling his way through the system. Taking his life of crime and turning himself into an old school fighter, a throwback fighter very similar to that of Ezzard Charles. You could watch Hopkins and at the end of his fights you always sensed that the man could have gone three, four, maybe even five more rounds.

He defies many things that common prize fighters are made of.

You can watch him in the ring and see that the man is thinking as he is pressing his opponant. It’s almost as if he’s had it mapped out and everything is right on schedule. When thrown off of his game, he jumps right back in the saddle and rides it to the finish line with the greatest of ease. He’s almost like watching an instructional video of how to actually box. He’s got it down to a science.

You begin to wonder if during the five years that Hopkins was in prison, thats was all that he did, study the game I mean. He had to have eat, drank and slept the fight game while in the joint. Hopkins (aka: prisioner Y4145) won the NPMC (National Penitentiary Middleweight Championship) three times and was one of the most feared and respected men inside the walls of the Graterford State Penitentiary for the short time that he was there. After being released he fought once at light heavy, losing his first career fight to Clinton Mitchell and never fought at that weight again. He then dropped down to 160 pounds and the middleweight division has not been the same since.

Hopkins has compiled an impressive record. Fifty one fights, forty six of those he has won by knocking out thirty two of the men across the ring from him. He’s had one draw and he’s only lost twice as a middle weight; once against a prime Roy Jones Jr and once against Jermain Taylor, HBO’s heir apparent. The first loss to Clinton Mitchell is generally discarded among all scribes and fans due to the fact that it was not in his appropriate division.

After losing his first career fight, Bernard went on to win twenty two fights in a row before he lost a twelve round unanimous decision to Roy Jones Jr. back on May 22, 1993. That fight was the deciding fight between the two best middleweights of the world, or at least Jones Jr. was looked on as the best. Hopkins was still “green” in a way. The fight was for the IBF Middleweight title. Since losing to Jones, Hopkins had’nt lost a fight in twelve years. He was on a 23 fight winning streak when he climbed through the ropes against Jermain Taylor & Duane Ford. Oh yeah…Duane Ford. Let’s move on for a moment.

After breaking the middleweight record for consecutive title defenses against basically everyone in the divison of substance, Hopkins is now in the twilight of his career with what I consider an undeserving loss. First off, I will forever state that the Taylor fight was a bad call. I’ve said it once and I will say it thrice one hundred times: Hopkins won that fight. Granted, I will admit that he gave away the first five or six rounds of the fight as he generally does, but anyone that has seen or followed Hopkins, again; that is what he does.

He works through the first half of a fight mapping out the plan to win and then he executes it for the second half of the fight. I’m sure that all who saw the fight and read what I just said is jumping out of their skin right now, but if you know Hopkins, you know that he thought that he was winning and you know that he was going about his general plan of action. Hopkins won the championship rounds as he always does while Taylor did nothing more than look silly and confused, but that my friends is a fact that no one wants to face.

No matter what Bernard does, he can’t win. Oh he wins the fights, but not the fans. Hopkins is more of a purist’s fighter. The casual fans loathe Hopkins as a fighter, writing him off as a bore when his is nothing short of being a tatitcal wizard. Bernard is a fighter, but he’s a boxer first.

Most rate Hopkins rise to fame with his utter schooling and blatant walk through of Felix Trinidad but he deserves more credit than that. That was just how Hopkins punctuated his paragraph with an exclamation point! He just shocked the world with that fight. Trinidad had walked through Joppy and countless others and was expected to do with same with Bernard. Needless to say when Hopkins floored Tito during the last frame of the twelve round beating, eyebrows were raised, jaws were dropped and Hopkins shifted his middleweight champion reign into overdrive. From there on out it was run after run and round after round of total class vs the outclassed.

Personally, I truely feel that Hopkins should’ve retired and gone down as one of the greatest middleweights of all time as I feel that he really had nothing left to prove in his career after losing to Taylor. He should have just retired and let Taylor pick up the slack, but like all fighters with pride, they take the challenge that the public wants. Just like Jones did with Tarver but we aint getting into that.

Enter Jermain Taylor and the rematch:

Jermain Taylor was and is still being touted as the heir apparent to Bernard’s middle weight legacy but if you examine his career record, he’s got a long way to go to make up for the gift shot that he got and also the gift decision that he should be ashamed of. Sure it’s great to hold all of Hopkins’s belts and titles, plus he’s sitting in the king’s chair (right or wrong that’s where he is) but to defend it and do it the way that Hopkins did…well that’s two totally different things entirely.

I don’t feel that it will be a factor in the future and thus this article will be nothing but a waste of the pitter pat on my keyboard and a good buzz from the countless glasses of Long Island Ice Tea that I’ve consumed…but ya’ll knows I likes to talk…so let me go ahead and make my pick.

Hopkins TKO in the latter rounds of the rematch.

That being said, let me ask and answer one of my own questions. Jarvis…what’s the deal? Why all the hate? I thought that you were a fan of Taylor? What’s not to like about Jermain Taylor?

True. I am a fan of Taylor. What’s not to like? Let’s get into what’s to like, as what’s not to like is so much more simple.

What’s to like: He’s young. He’s powerful. He can box. But not anything near Hopkins’ level. But he can box. He’s powerful. HBO has proved that he’s marketable with his family history session that they broadcast last year. He’s fun to watch. Taylor has shown a lot of maturity and patience lately in the ring, which seems to be one of his major attributes. He just could’nt use it against Bernard.and that goes down as a fault.

What’s not to like: Looking deeply into it, Jermain’s just got a half assed record. He’s been fed a healthy diet of fighters that have not been proven as middleweights. Hell, they have’nt even really been proven as light middles. Either that or he’s not been thrown in with a real middleweight fighter. Sure he got thrown in with Joppy, but he was pretty much washed up and fed to Jermain like a bowl of grits and don’t anyone say that that kid don’t like grits. He’e from Arkansas, you know that kid likes grits! That to me is Jermain’s basic detractor. Twenty four wins and seventeen of those are knockouts against all but questionable fighters.

I know what most of you are going to say: “What about Joppy? Joppy fought Hopkins and Trinidad.” I’ve said this before, so I shall say it once again: Anyone that knows what Joppy was knows that the Joppy that fought Taylor, or better yet ran from Taylor, was not the Joppy that fought Hopkins or Trinidad and he was not the Joppy that was a three time middleweight title holder. That’s not Taylor’s fault though. Taylor came to fight and fight he did. Joppy could’nt handle his shots as he was rocked in the third round and pretty much ran every other round.

Truthfully, Taylor will be a future star in the middleweight divison and he’s going to shine. I still like Taylor, but against Bernard Hopkins he did not win, nor do I see him doing so in the rematch. I just honestly don’t see Bernard Hopkins letting his belts and record go away so easily without a fight.

Watch the first Hopkins Taylor match. Everytime that I watch it, things just get’s further and further out of Taylor’s favor. There is no way that anyone will ever be able to convince me that Taylor won. Once Hopkins started landing shots on him, he folded like a got-dam lawn chair.

Hopkins should just come out, defeat Taylor in the rematch and move on to promoting.

Again, that was Hopkins…TKO in the latter rounds of the rematch.