Friday, March 29, 2024  |

News

Aficianado

Is Bernard Hopkins-Gennady Golovkin really possible?

Fighters Network
24
Feb
Photo by Ed Mulholland

Photo by Ed Mulholland

Team Golovkin sees its near-term To Do list like this…
Fight Dominic Wade, beat him. Then, fight Canelo Alvarez or Amir Khan, beat either.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
And, to this point, it hasn’t been easy but IBF/WBA middleweight titlist Gennady Golovkin made it look, at times, not all that difficult.
Because he’s that good.
But I’ve been seeing and hearing stuff that departs from the planned pathway to prosperity for “GGG” in 2016.
For a few weeks now, we’ve been hearing rumblings about Bernard Hopkins vs. Golovkin, the 51-year-old physical and mental marvel against the fighting pride of Kazakhstan. The fight would be contested at 168 pounds or thereabouts and would possibly be the adios effort from the living legend Hopkins.
I read Hopkins say he’d do it.
image1.PNG
What about it, Tom Loeffler, promoter of “3G”? Is this a thing? Is this talk grounded in reality or, more so, chatter, spitballing, playing fantasy matchmaker?
“I was clear in my statement. GGG is completely focused on the Wade fight in April and the priority is the winner of the Canelo-Khan fight, as ordered by the WBC, if GGG is successful against Wade,” Loeffler clarified. “If they don’t fight and the WBC strips the title (from Canelo, who also holds THE RING middleweight championship), then the next priority is Billy Joe Saunders for the WBO unification fight. I was just complimenting Bernard for the courage he shows to fight GGG when the other champions or top middleweight fighters do not show the same excitement to fight GGG.”
Got it…
I wondered if the Hopkins-GGG fight had been elevated from vague notion status to a more concrete hedge. This info from Loeffler helps me get a sense of the likelihood of us seeing the Philly freak try and climb another mountain, after his stumble trying to out-sage IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight boss Sergey Kovalev.
Michael Woods would love to try and climb a mountain but, despite what “Rumble in the Bronx” tells us, there are no mountains in New York. So nyah…

SUBSCRIBE

rsz_ring_4apr15_cover_1-page-001

You can subscribe to the print and digital editions of THE RING Magazine by clicking the banner or here. On the cover this month: Tyson Fury heads up the 87th Annual RING Awards as Fighter of the Year. You can also order the current issue, which is on newsstands, or back issues on our subscribe page.

SIGN UP TO GET RING NEWS ALERTS