Will Kovalev Be Another Victim of the Hopkins Curse?

    2
    1115

    Bernard Hopkins v Tavoris CloudIt was announced recently that Bernard Hopkins will fight Sergey Kovalev on November 8th in Atlantic City, NJ on HBO. Now we could talk about how Hopkins is in fact breaking the divide between Golden Boy fighters fighting exclusively on HBO, but that is a tired subject that quite frankly has been approached far too often. Instead we will talk about an erie trend in Hopkins career. In pivotal fights, Hopkins tends to be the doom and gloom of a fighter’s career and oddly enough it seems that as time goes by Hopkins is more so the kiss of death to young (or younger) fighters career.

    So where did it begin, well in order to do this story properly I asked the boxing encyclopedia @NaoltaBox on twitter for some help about Hopkins’ career since I have not been a die hard boxing fan my whole life. It is easy to begin the tale of the Hopkins’ curse at Felix “Tito” Trinidad, but that would belittle the saga of Hopkins. The narrative truly dates back to Hopkins’ two battles with Segundo Marcado, the second of which ended in a Hopkins technical knockout victory and winning the IBF Middleweight Title. After that loss, Marcado only picked up a single win over his next nine fights with a draw sprinkled in, the draw also came to a 1-23 fighter named Jesus Carlos Velez. Yikes!

    Hopkins faced face John David Jackson shortly thereafter, ironically Kovalev’s current trainer. Jackson was at the tale end of his career and one might say Hopkins helped expedite the process of retirement as Hopkins stopped Jackson much like he did Marcado. Jackson would only fight two more times in his career losing another title fight to Jorge Fernando Castro and winning a farewell fight against Dave Boone.

    Hopkins would also offer a similar fate to Antwun Echols although to be fair, I think part of the Echols saga was that he simply refused to call it quits and that hindered his record in the latter stages. The one that really began the Hopkins’ narrative of career destruction as I prefaced above is Felix “Tito” Trinidad. Hopkins’ threw the Puerto Rican flag on the ground at a presser and disrespected Trinidad on every occasion, the lack of respect shown to him had a proud Trinidad wanting to bloody a vocal Hopkins. What ended up happening?

    A methodical Hopkins broke Trinidad at the very essence. Hopkins began by fighting methodically and working off the subtly of his game frustrated Trinidad who wanted to exchange. Well ahead in the final round of a twelve round fight, Hopkins sent the dagger home as he stopped Trinidad with barely anytime remaining. Not just did Hopkins defeat Trinidad, but it seemed at the time he defeated the people of Puerto Rico as well as the environment went silent and with no joy filled in the room minus those who traveled for Hopkins. Keep in mind this also happened a few weeks after the tragedy of 9/11 and the idea of patriotism was still something being sold to the American people at large even though Trinidad was not American, the feeling of honor seemed to be carried over in a weird jingoistic way.

    After the Hopkins fight, Trinidad fought sporadically. He came back to fight two hand picked opponents in Hacine Cherifi and Ricardo Mayorga in the stretch of three years, but then would lose to both Ronald “Winky” Wright and a past his prime Roy Jones Jr. The biggest take away is the fact that Trinidad never seemed the same after that fight as the usually active fighter began to stray from the sport and seemed as though a bit of the passion had left him with his loss to Hopkins.

    Now here is where things get really weird. Hopkins not just affects guys who he beats, but somehow guys who have beat him have witnessed horrible declines after facing him, the first example is Jermain Taylor, who beat Hopkins twice. At the time, it appeared Hopkins was  old and declining and Taylor had laid the old dog out to pasture, but Hopkins was able to reinvent himself by taking a tough fight with Antonio Tarver not long after. Taylor on the other hand went on to lose to Kelly Pavlik twice then had a dreadful performance in the “Super Six” super middleweight tournament on Showtime in which Arthur Abraham  knocked him out in the twelfth round. Even though Taylor is getting in a title shot with Sam Solliman in the fall pending a criminal investigation about the fighter for an alleged shooting involving his cousin, serious concerns also arise around his health in particular his brain.

    After his win over Antonio Tarver, Hopkins then took on one of the most feared fighters at the time Ronald “Winky” Wright. Once again, Hopkins would come in and defy the odds as well as frustrate the younger fighter cruising to victory via unanimous decision. Wright would then lose to Paul Williams and Peter Quillin before deciding that he had enough and called it a career.

    One of the greatest examples of  Hopkins’ negative effect on a fighter is Kelly Pavlik. I thought about writing this whole piece on that fight as it is worthy of a book one day. Hopkins was viewed as a dead man walking coming into the fight with Pavlik as Pavlik destroyed Taylor, the man who beat Hopkins in the not so distant past. The commercial that aired on television showed a train coming head on towards the viewer, a metaphor for Pavlik’s power as most felt that Hopkins could only do so much.

    Instead it was a masterful lesson in balance and accuracy as Hopkins flat out frustrated Pavlik by timing his jab all night. Pavlik looked lost in the fight and to make matters worse, Hopkins talked to Pavlik like a small child in the ring applauding his effort after the fight ended. Not to say this was the only stressor that sent Pavlik over the edge, but Pavlik not long after entered Betty Ford rehabilitation center for alcoholism, a battle he is still fighting to this day.

    Pavlik would return and look alright at times, but then get bloodied up by Sergio Martinez in a fight that most will probably remember as his last memorable fight. Pavlik took an extended layoff only to come back with more tattoos and less of an identity as a fighter, it appeared once someone stood up to his power he began to question what it was that made him special in the first place.

    Another one of the weird examples is Chad Dawson, who like Jermain Taylor beat Hopkins two times, but his first victory was ruled a no contest due to a spine buster landed by Dawson early in the fight. Dawson would win a wide decision over Hopkins in 2012 then struggle. Right after that fight, Dawson called out Andre Ward at Ward’s weight class and would get knocked out. Months later, Dawson would get knocked out again this time in the first round against Adonis Stevenson.  Dawson is now a cruiserweight, who looks to be taking training camp lightly these days as his weigh in photo showed a much more plump Dawson, who simply looks despondent towards the sport right now.

    The final contender on this list, Tavoris Cloud, a man who in 2010 called himself the modern day Bernard Hopkins. Hopkins’ dismantled Cloud over twelve rounds. Cloud has since gone on to lose to Adonis Stevenson and will be fighting at the end of September in his Canada in what realistically may be one of his last fights of his career, if not his final fight.

    So what does all of this mean? Well, if we look at history only one man has defeated the curse of Bernard Hopkins and it was Joe Calzaghe who beat Hopkins then took a fight with Roy Jones Jr. winning that fight as well and he retired shortly afterward. So if we look at the context, Kovalev does not appear to be retiring anytime soon, so is he doomed? Even if he wins by the most spectacular knockout, is that only going to lead to doom and gloom not unlike Jermain Taylor and Chad Dawson? On the other hand, will this  be the night that Hopkins finally gets his curtain call?  He has played with father time for a very long time and as we all know, father time is still undefeated.