By Bill Phanco: 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins (52-6-2, 32 KO’s) faces IBF light heavyweight champion Tavoris Cloud (24-0, 19 KO’s) on March 9th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Hopkins wants to win another world title, and he’ll be 48 by the time this fight takes place, making him one of the oldest world champions.
Hopkins hasn’t looked good lately in his last two fights against Chad Dawson, so it’s hard to tell how much Hopkins has left for this fight with Cloud. Hopkins lost last fight in April of this year to Dawson by a 12 round majority decision in a fight where Hopkins couldn’t pull the trigger enough on his punches to get the win.
In his fight before that, Hopkins’ fight with Dawson ended up a 2nd round no contest after Dawson picked Hopkins off the ground and dropped him on his shoulder on the canvas. Hopkins hurt his shoulder during the fall, and the fight was promptly stopped, but Hopkins didn’t look good in the 2 rounds of action before then.
Cloud hasn’t been all that impressive in defending his title against the likes of Gabriel Campillo, Fulgencio Zuniga, and Yusaf Mack. Those fights were competitive ones for Cloud and he hardly shined, especially in the Campillo fight. A lot of fans think Cloud should have lost that fight.
Cloud is nothing special, and Hopkins, if he’s got anything left in the tank, he should win this one, but I don’t know how much Hopkins has left in the tank at this point in his career. I do know that Hopkins didn’t look good in either of his last two fights.
Hopkins will have to really take the fight to Cloud if he wants to win this fight because Cloud is the type of fighter that does really well when he’s the one pressuring his opponents.