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March 2002
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
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THERE’S ONLY ONE NO. 1 Roy Jones rules the roost but Bernard Hopkins wants to execute the world light-heavyweight champion’s roosters. Sounds interesting. GRAHAM HOUSTON reports |
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HOPKINS-DANIELS:undisputed middleweight champ won but it wasn't exciting
- Get Big Pic Undisputed champions Roy Jones Jr. and Bernard Hopkins each had the predictable easy win on 2 February (same night, different locations) but a meeting between them is clearly no nearer. This, despite the street-style goading of Hopkins, the middleweight champ, who insists on a 50-50 purse split with the light-heavy champ and a special accommodation concerning the match weight. For his part, Jones says he wants 60% of the purse and that there will be no deal on weight. And there the matter rests. With neither side apparently willing to budge, it seems at least a possibility that Jones will complete the last step in cleaning up the light-heavy division by facing Dariusz Michalczewski, even if it means going to Germany to meet the unbeaten World Boxing Organisation champ. Then, again, Jones just might decide to stay at home and fulfill another mandatory defence obligation, either against International Boxing Federation No. 1 Antonio Tarver or Britain’s Clinton Woods, the World Boxing Council mandatory. But with Jones, you never know what he’ll do. What we do know is that Jones, without doubt, is the world’s leading boxer at any weight. He re-established that ranking in emphatic fashion with his seventh-round knockout over Aussie Glen Kelly, the IBF’s mandatory contender, at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida. Earlier in the evening the 37-year-old Hopkins had taken care of Carl Daniels, another IBF No. 1 challenger, at Reading, Pennsylvania (about 90 minutes by car from the champ’s hometown of Philadelphia) when his thoroughly beaten opponent quit at the end of the 10th round. Hopkins thus set a record for middleweight title defences, this being his 15th, going one better than Argentina’s late, great Carlos Monzon. But Hopkins for the most part was defending a portion of the title (the IBF) and his defences included the no contest with Robert Allen in their first meeting. Monzon fought a tougher calibre of opponent, usually away from home and mostly for the undivided title. Still, it takes an effort for a fighter to stay disciplined over the course of a long championship reign, to keep making weight and keep winning, so Hopkins’s 15 defences is no small achievement. But it does not mean he deserves an equal purse split with Jones. I have to side with Jones here. He would be the defending champion. Not only this, but he comfortably outpointed Hopkins when they fought as middleweights in 1993. Yes, I know that Hopkins was masterful in his one-sided victory over the favoured Felix “Tito” Trinidad last September, but Jones has a point with he says that Tito is the only big name that Hopkins has defeated. A Jones-Hopkins fight would be a big-occasion affair, but I am not sure it would be a great fight. Jones looks too big, too fast and too powerful. After stopping Carl Daniels, Hopkins talked to Jones in a TV hook-up prior to Jones’s meeting with Glen Kelly. This consisted mainly of Hopkins making insulting comments and Jones basically throwing “60-40” (the purse division, as seen by Jones) back at him. Then Hopkins definitely said the wrong thing when he said, a smirk on his face: “He don’t want to fight me. I’m going down there [to Jones’s hometown of Pensacola, Florida] and kill his roosters.” Now, Jones loves his fighting cocks. He ripped off the headset and went back to his warm-up shadow boxing in the dressing room. You could see that he was seething. This was unfortunate for Kelly, a big, strong likeable aborigine from Sydney, because this was one night when Jones definitely was in no mood to take it easy on the other guy. Kelly had won 28 and drawn one of 29 fights, but had never faced anyone remotely like Jones. Right from the start, the 30-year-old challenger seemed mentally beaten. Everyone knew his one, slim chance was to go at Jones and try to bully him. But as Jones blasted right hands to the body, underneath the Aussie’s high guard, you could almost read Kelly’s thoughts: “Strewth, mate, I knew he was fast but I never knew he could hit this hard.” Already, it was clear that the only thing to be decided here was how long Kelly was going to last. Before the fight, the 33-year-old Jones had been hinting that he might be contemplating getting out of the game, that it was difficult to get enthusiastic about meeting opponents who are nowhere near as good as he is. Then he went and turned in what I thought was his most impressive performance since he knocked out Virgil Hill with a body shot in April 1998. Jones was sharp, quick and cruel. He seemed to be loading up on every shot. He would just flick the jab as a sort of range-finder, then come with the hooks, the right hands, the sudden barrages. Kelly was dropped by a left uppercut through the middle in the third, then went down from a left hook to the body in the sixth. In the Aussie’s corner, manager and former world triple champ Jeff Fenech was reduced to telling Kelly that the worst-case scenario was that he’d get knocked out so why not go in and throw punches? In other words, if you’re going to get knocked out, get knocked out trying. But I think that Kelly was too confused and too outclassed to do anything. And when the inevitable end came, in the seventh, it was with a touch of comedy as Jones stood against the ropes with chin stuck out and hands behind his back as if daring Kelly to try to hit him. The Aussie stuck out a left, Jones slid off to the side and whipped in a right hand over the top and Kelly caved in, to be counted out by referee Max Parker Jr. after one minute, 55 seconds of the round. Although the finishing blow looked no harder than many shots that had landed in the previous six rounds I think that Kelley had simply had enough, and I don’t blame him. In the middleweight title fight, the packed crowd of 8,243 at Reading, Pennsylvania and HBO TV viewers didn’t have much to get excited about. But it soon became clear that this was to be one of those workmanlike-but-unspectacular performances, as in many of Hopkins’s fights prior to the superlative showing against Trinidad. Faced with a cagey, survivor-type southpaw, Hopkins fought in somewhat conservative fashion, winning every round as he methodically broke down Daniels with pressure and body punches. Daniels landed some left-handers from out of his southpaw position but couldn’t hurt Hopkins. But Hopkins was finding it difficult to land anything really clean and flush on target, although in the ninth a left hook had Daniels stumbling halfway across the ring. After the 10th, Daniels told his chief second, Tommy Brooks, that he couldn’t continue. Afterwards he said he was still feeling dazed from the left hook in the ninth, which he said caught him behind the right ear. Hopkins said he wished the crowd (“the wonderful people here”, as he called them) could have seen a clean knockout. “But a win is a win,” he said. As I understand it, Hopkins wants Jones to fight as a super middle, at about 168lbs (12st). He says that Jones will have too much of a natural weight advantage at 175lbs
(12st 7lbs). Hopkins’s best fighting weight seems to be around 158lbs (11st 4lbs), while Jones weighed 172lbs (12st 4lbs) for the fight with Kelly. We’re talking about 14lbs here (or a stone, as we’d say in Britain). Yes, I admit Hopkins has a point. That’s a lot of weight to give away to someone like Jones. But Jones has a point, too. He’s the champion. In fact, he’s the man as we say today. If Hopkins wants what he’s got, Jones says, then he should be prepared to come and get it, even if it means giving away weight. As far as Jones is concerned, he is not sufficiently motivated by a bout with Hopkins to make the extra effort of losing, say, 4lbs. And when a fighter is as finely tuned as Jones, dropping those extra pounds is not all that easy to do. But I think there is a bit of ego involved, too. Jones has no wish to accommodate Hopkins and thus make it appear that he needs the Philly Executioner. As far as Jones is concerned, he doesn’t need anyone — they need him. And a bit of advice for Hopkins: If you really, truly want this fight to happen, lay off the remarks about Roy’s roosters. |
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