Hopkins Revenges Jones Defeat

Las Vegas, Nevada – Bernard Hopkins (51-5-1, 32 KO) won a unanimous decision over long time rival Roy Jones Jr. (54-7, 40 KO) in a dull contest that lived up to it’s farcical hype that the public and media had labelled on it.

The fight was fought at a snail’s pace, with CompuBox considering counting the feints instead of the punches. The only time of real excitement was when Hopkins made the most of the recovery time given for Jones’ rabbit punch, where referee Tony Weeks rightly took a point away from Roy. Hopkins took four out of the five allowed minutes before coming back throwing wild punches at a retreating Jones, who then traded back for five seconds after the bell, nearly getting a double disqualification.

Hopkins constantly used his head to come inside, landing below the belt and rabbit punched. But Hopkins showed his street-wise mentality as it only occurred on the blind-side of Weeks. Every time Jones landed a foul, Hopkins would roll around on the floor demanding a point deduction. Hopkins was down three times, once in the sixth, eighth and tenth, all from Jones fouls. Jones also had recovery time for an accidental headbutt in the tenth.

Instead of landing any good punches, the legends put on an embarrassing show. I’m a fan of both, but this was horrible. Both are past their primes and can’t deal with any high tempo. Both need to hang ’em up, they’ve had spectacular careers, both hall-of-famers and all-time greats. There’s no point tarnishing their legacies with another pointless fight for a couple of pound coins.

The scores came in at 118-109, 117-110, 117-110, all for Hopkins. The BTBC scored the fight 118-110.

After the fight, Hopkins called out David Haye, and the least said about that the better.

On the undercard, light heavyweight Ismayl Sillakh (12-0, 11 KO) scored a second-round knockout of Daniel Judah (23-5-3, 10 KO).

Jason Litzau (27-2, 21 KO) got the nod over Rocky Juarez (28-6-1, 20 KO) as the fight went to the scorecards after Litzau’s left eye was nearly shut as a result of an accidental headbutt in the seventh. It was a unanimous technical decision with cards of 68-65, 67-66 and 67-66. The BTBC scored the fight 67-66.

You know you have problems when Sergio Mora (22-1-1, 6 KO) was involved in the most exciting fight of the night, disposing overmatched Calvin Green (21-5-1, 13 KO) in seven rounds.

18 year-old Frankie Gomez (1-0, 1 KO) made a successful start to his promising professional career with a third-round stoppage win over Clayvonne Howard (2-4, 1 KO)