I stayed up all night to watch the rematch between Roy Jones and Bernard Hopkins and must say I wasn?t exactly blown away with the action. The one sided 12 round fight that saw a 45 year old Hopkins out hustle a severely faded Jones will not go down as one of the great rematches in history.
Given Jones?s age (41) and first round knockout loss to Danny Green last year, I thought the former pound for pound king acquitted himself reasonably well during the fight. He wasn?t afraid of Hopkins and spent much of the fight chasing down the defensively minded veteran. Hopkins threw more punches, but few of them had any ill intent and he executed a mind numbingly boring strategy of pushing Jones into the ropes and roughing him up on the inside whenever Jones stopped punching (which was often).
Jones simply did not commit to his punches from the outside, stopping well short with his jabs and hooks and barely ever landing right hands. He tried to bang with Hopkins on the inside, but given his back was mostly to the ropes, he couldn?t get enough leverage to do any damage. He seemed to warm up later on in the fight but threw far too few punches to ever really be in the match.
There was a bizarre episode in the 6th round when Hopkins dramatically went down from the punch to a back of the head that ended with a furious Hopkins swinging at Jones after the bell and several people jumping into the ring to stop the melee. Hopkins went down again from a seemingly light tap on the back of the head again later on in the bout, and then once more from a questionable low blow, taking several minutes to recuperate. It seemed clear to everyone ringside that Hopkins was using the time to get his energy back and it seemed to work as the old man still continued to outwork the shadow boxing Jones.
The excitement in the 6th was the highlight of the bout as the rest of it looked more like two men pretending to fight than actually engaging in a professional boxing match. Jones, while still incredibly quick, was just not capable of sustaining any pressure, and Hopkins, while still as wily as ever, didn?t have the power to hurt Jones.
The fans showed their displeasure by booing throughout the bout as each man failed to engage in any real action, but amazingly both fighters seemed satisfied with their performances. The fight has not exactly endeared either man to the boxing community, and hopefully they will both take their money and leave the sport with their brains intact. After the bout, Hopkins uttered some nonsense about challenging the WBA champ David Haye, who near decapitated a motivated John Ruiz earlier in the day, but given his performance over Jones, there?s more chance of Manny Pacquiao fighting Wladimir Klitschko.
Jones, sensibly, stated he would be considering his career with his team and family, who will no doubt tell him to pack it in immediately.
