Bernard Hopkins took Beibut Shumenov to his master class and spanked him for a twelve round decision victory in front of 6,300 fans and a Showtime audience. “The Alien” scored an 11th round knockdown and had his way with his foe despite one rather myopic judge scoring the fight in favor of Shumenov. The fight was embarrassingly one sided at times and Hopkins often looked like a cat playing with a mouse.
“Where's the 15 rounds at?” screamed the 49-year old Hopkins. “I'm a 15 round fighter.”
The AARP light heavyweight champion confused the former Olympian from Kazakhstan with clever footwork, timing and a hard jab. Shumenov seemingly fell into every trap that Hopkins set for him and grew progressively desperate as the rounds wore on. Interestingly, Shumenov had no trainer in his corner and trained himself for the bout. He had Jacob “Stitch” Duran working his corner applying vaseline/water with no instructions forthcoming from anyone outside of a few Kazakhs in the audience.
The announcers made a big deal out of the fact that Shumenov should have had a trainer. But that is an academic argument. Hopkins is in another league and Shumenov, while a great athlete, is not in the same league as a Chad Dawson. I thought Al Bernstein made an error in judgment as he kept decrying Shumenov's “lackluster performance.” Shumenov was trying hard. He kept shooting hard rights that would have fell a lot of top-10 light heavyweights. He was just in with someone whose boxing intellect far surpassed anything he could comprehend at this stage in his career.
Hopkins looks to face Adonis Stevenson before the year ends. Among his goals include fighting past his 50th birthday (this January) and shrinking down to the 160 lb weight class to challenge Floyd Mayweather.
“Without work and just prayer you're a fool,” Hopkins said. “One works the other. You can ask and you can be on your knees, you can hope and you can do all these things. But if you don't go out and put the work in, it's all talk.”
“I'm not done yet, I tell you.”
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