Kovalev dominates Hopkins at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ USA
By Syl Peterkin, RCM Boxing/MMA/Jiujitsu Correspondent
Atlantic City, NJ (November 9th, 2014)– Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23 KOs) had a dominant performance against the living legend and future Hall of Famer Bernard Hopkins (55-7-2, 32 KOs). The fight was completely one sided with Kovalev knocking down Hopkins in the first round. Kovalev went on to have a clean sweep in the rest of the rounds with scores of 120-107, 120-107 and 120-106.
Hopkins wasn’t the “Executioner” (nickname) of old. The newer “Alien” Bernard Hopkins was ineffective through the vast majority of the fight. Hopkins was though able to push Kovalev past the 8th round for the first time in his career. Kovalev picked spots and brought the fight to Hopkins but was smart enough not to heavily engage in inside fighting. This strategy allowed Kovalev to not fall victim to Hopkins traditional game plan of counter attacking and smothering his opponents. Kovalev’s corner encouraged him to finish the older Hopkins off after the 9th round. Kovalev made some attempts to do this in the 12th but was ineffective.
With this, what is next for Hopkins is under question. Hopkins was thought to have been done after losing to Jermaine Taylor twice back in 2005. He would come back to defeat Antonio Tarver in 2006, just 6 months later. He would later lose to Joe Calzaghe in 2008 before defeating Kelly Pavlik again just 6 months later. His defeat to Chad Dawson in 2012 only put him on the back-burner for 11 months when he came back to defeat Tavoris Cloud.
Hopkins has made a history of comebacks after defeats but at almost 50 years old it seems unlikely. Kovalev though now has the option of facing other individuals in the division including Adonis Stevenson who holds an 80% KO rate (compared to Sergey Kovalev 85% KO rate).
Undercard
Nadjib Mohammedi over Demetrius Walker via KO1
Vyacheslav Glazkov over Darnell Wilson via KO7
Vyacheslav Shabranskyy over Emil Gonzalez via RTD2
Eric Hunter over Daniel Ramirez via TKO6
Sadam Ali over Luis Carlos Abregu via TKO9
Sullivan Barrera over Rowland Bryant via RTD4
Ryan Martin over Isaac Gonzalez via TKO2
Andrey Sirotkin over Michael Mitchell viaUD6
COMMENTS
Editor in Chief
We are the Editorial staff for the top independent international boxing and mma online publication since 2012. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @realcombatmedia. For breaking news reports, contact us at [email protected] and for advertising or consulting inquiries, email us at [email protected].
English