Hopkins dominates Pavlik

Bernard Hopkins gave Kelly Pavlik a boxing lesson and a first loss that he will never forget.

The 43-year-old Hopkins used lightning quick combinations and a cagey, near-perfect defense to embarrass and confuse Pavlik in a 12-round non-title bout Saturday night at Boardwalk Hall.

Hopkins, who dominated the middleweight class for a decade, made the 26-year-old Pavlik—the WBC and WBO middleweight champion—look slow and powerless in fighting at 170 pounds, 10 pounds over his weight class.

“I think this was my best performance, better than (Antonio) Tarver, better than (Felix) Trinidad, better than Oscar (De La Hoya), better than my 21 defenses,” Hopkins said. “I am extremely happy.”

Hopkins received winning scores of 119-106 from judge Alan Rubenstein, 117-109 from Barbara Perez and 118-108 from Steve Weisfeld.

The mismatch was obvious from the opening bell, and Hopkins reveled in the beating he gave the Youngstown, Ohio boxer. By the fifth round, Pavlik was bleeding from the nose and by the seventh Hopkins was taunting him.

During one stretch in the round, Hopkins landed four or five straight punches, and then stepped back started winding up on his punches before delivering them.

“He was a great fighter but I knew my style and quickness was underrated and it was going to give him problems tonight,” Hopkins added.

Pavlik (34-1) never stopped stalking Hopkins of Philadelphia, but he never seemed to hurt him.

“I just could not get off tonight,” Pavlik said. “I don’t know why? It was not his slickness. It just wasn’t me out there tonight. I couldn’t do anything I’m used to doing. We’re going back to the drawing board. it just wasn’t me tonight. I’ll be more comfortable going back to 160.”

With tinges of gray in his beard, Hopkins even looked the fresher fighter. He came into ring wearing an executioner’s mask and black robe with an ‘X’ on both, and he terminated Pavlik’s perfect mark in improving to (49-5-1).

The crowd had come to hail Pavlik, who had battered Gary Lockett in his first title defense in June.

When he was in trouble early, they chanted “Kel-lee! Kel-lee!”

Halfway through the fight the chants become “B-Hop! B-Hop!”

Hopkins landed a barrage of blows in the 12th round and started yelling at Pavlik in a move that was no more than a gleeful taunt.

“I wanted to pick it up and step it up,” Hopkins said. “I wanted to stop him.”

When the final bell sounded, both fighters continued to throw punches, forcing referee Benji Esteves to dive between them.

Hopkins then walked over to the television cameras and glared, wondering how so many had predicted that Pavlik would knock him out for the first time in his career.

In hindsight, it’s a wonder Pavlik was still standing at the end.

Hopkins praised Pavlik after the fight.

“I was a fan of yours before the fight and I am a fan of yours now,” Hopkins told Pavlik in the corner. “You just need to get a little more slickness. You need to bend you knees more like your coach was telling you. Middleweight is your destiny.”

Hopkins drops fighting words before Pavlik bout

Bernard Hopkins has tried everything short of hypnosis on Kelly Pavlik and, for all we know, he may have even hired someone to try that.

This is the guy nicknamed “The Executioner,” who speaks incessantly of his days in a Pennsylvania prison, who often wears an executioner’s mask to the ring, and who frequently uses prefight news conferences and interviews as an opportunity to strike fear into his opponent’s heart.

Hopkins, who will meet Pavlik on Saturday in a non-title light heavyweight fight at Atlantic City, N.J.’s Boardwalk Hall on HBO Pay-Per-View, has been all but killing Pavlik with kindness.

The death stare that Hopkins has been known for throughout his 20-year career has been absent. Hopkins has stared largely off in the distance rather than attempting to bore a hole through Pavlik.

Hopkins praised Pavlik’s skills, spoken admiringly of Pavlik’s heart and generally has responded as if Pavlik deserved to be a heavy favorite.

The wily Hopkins, though, has never entered a fight he didn’t believe he couldn’t win. And if his strategy has been to somehow lull Pavlik into a false sense of security, well, Team Pavlik insists it has too much respect for Hopkins and his accomplishments to fall for that.

“Kelly has been prepared very well for this fight, in all areas, and when I say that, I mean physically as well as mentally,” promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank said. “He knows what Hopkins has accomplished. Look at what the guys has done, how long he was (middleweight) champion and all the defenses he has had and he’s still up there now, at his age. Nobody is fooling anybody here. Kelly knows he’s got his hands full. And he’s been prepared for anything that may happen.”

That Hopkins is still fighting now, at 43, is testament to his fanatical conditioning and to a significantly better than expected performance against Antonio Tarver in 2006. He had promised his late mother, Shirley, that he wouldn’t fight past 40 and, even though he was five months past his 41st birthday when the Tarver fight occurred, he had vowed it would be his last.

But then he went out and routed Tarver so easily, and looked so good in doing so, he realized that he still had the capacity to defeat world-class talent and make big money in the process.

So, since he’s fought Tarver, he’s beaten Winky Wright and lost to Joe Calzaghe. The penurious Hopkins, who carries a Costco card in his wallet, has a simple explanation for why he’s still at it after all these years: The money.

Or, as he prefers to call it, back pay.

Hopkins once used to rage against the system, feeling he was being cheated out of monies due to him. Now, Hopkins is one of the game’s top earners and he hasn’t been cleanly beaten yet even though he’s nearly at the midpoint between the legal drinking age (21) and the retirement age (65). He’ll hit that when he turns 44 in two months.

“My motivation is back pay,” Hopkins said. “And I’m a late bloomer and I’m a late start in everything in boxing. As you look at my history for years, the last five years have been a blessing for Bernard Hopkins and my family and it reflects that I’ve done well.

I’ve done well in the ring and I’ve done well financially and dealing with (Golden Boy Promotions CEO) Richard Schaefer, who comes from the banking industry. I’ve made some great investments.

“But in saying that, I am a late bloomer. Whether history reflects whether it was worth it or not, I can tell you it was for the years that I didn’t get the chance to shine. And you wrote about it many years and, you know, some believe that my decisions were going in the wrong direction and it bought me time. It bought me time to be here at 40-plus years old, still doing what I do at my best.”

What Hopkins has been best at over the years has been finding what his opponent has been best at and taking it away. Pavlik is 34-0 with 30 knockouts, but he’s still a young fighter on the rise and getting better.

Clearly, his power and his right hands are his drawing cards and Hopkins knows that if he neutralizes the right, the chances of a victory increase exponentially.

In 2001, he was such an underdog when he was fighting in Don King’s Middleweight Championship Series that King had Felix Trinidad’s name engraved on the Sugar Ray Robinson Trophy as the series champion before the final bout.

Hopkins, though, broke down film of the then-unbeaten Trinidad and quickly figured out that Trinidad wasn’t so fearful without that left hook. Hopkins neutralized the left hook, turned Trinidad into a puppy and stopped him in the 12th round.

He’s not predicting a stoppage of Pavlik, but he is cautioning anyone expecting Pavlik to walk right through him to remember the lessons of the past.

“Kelly Pavlik is the perfect opponent for me … because he comes forward, he comes to fight, and look – he wants to knock Bernard Hopkins out,” Hopkins said. “At least that’s what he says. But he’s going to find it difficult and that’s going to change the fight. I guarantee you, that’s going to change the fight. Tito tried to walk me down. Tito had one bullet in the chamber and that was a left hook. If Kelly Pavlik thinks he’s going to beat Bernard Hopkins because he has a right hand, he’s a damn fool.”

Pavlik is hardly a trash talker and he hasn’t predicted a knockout. Prodded about Hopkins’ claims, he said, “I haven’t in one fight ever predicted a KO. I go in there to win. If the knockout comes, that’s great.”

Hopkins clearly wants him to try for it, though. There are some defensive coordinators who blitz all the time. But then there are situations that call for a prevent defense. Hopkins is the master of knowing when to blitz and knowing when to play the prevent.

Nobody in this area has ever been better at it.

“You’ve got an offensive guy and you’ve got a defensive guy (in this fight),” Hopkins said. “That’s the perfect match. That’s the perfect match. You’ve got a guy that comes forward and you’ve got a guy that specializes in guys coming forward so he can let them punch so he can punch. That’s what – that’s been my game. So there will be no strategy put out there for people to hear (who may be) listening. But there will be a fight where you know the Mack truck is coming and can Bernard Hopkins derail the Mack truck? I say I will flatten the tires. It will slow up, and then it will conk out.”