Bernard Hopkins to defend against Morrade Hakkar

08.01 - By Clinton Mollett: I would have remortgaged my house to see Bernard Hopkins in that ring again with Roy Jones Jr but unfortunately the undisputed middleweight champion believes he now possess an Oscar DeLa Hoya super star status since dishing out a one-sided beating to Felix Trinidad and is not going to fight Jones Jr for anything less than a 50/50 split of all revenue. If Hopkins had of excepted Jones Jr’ 60/40 offer then he would have been able to collect at least $6 million dollars from the fight which would have been his biggest payday to date and giving him a chance to avenge his only true loss.

The executioner could have taken on ‘Tito’ Trinidad again, who had been actively pursuing a rematch against Hopkins since losing to him last year. I admit it would not have been very sporting of Bernard to go after Trinidad a second time round but he still would have netted an easy $3-4 million by doing so. Then there was WBO 168 lb Titlist Joe Calzaghe who called him out, only to be offered a ridiculously small purse by Hopkins. HBO tried to tempt the pilly native with a two-fight deal worth at least $9 million and Showtime dangled a $10.5 million dollar three-fight deal in front of him, but the pugilistic master turned his nose up at both of them.

Hopkins (41-2-1) had messed around for so long trying to secure bigger pay checks than his crowd drawing ability could justify that he now was due for a mandatory defence of his WBC title. The challenger is the relatively unknown Morrade Hakkar who currently holds the European and French middleweight titles. Hakkar has suffered three losses in his pro career to little known fighters (avenging two of them) and has a record of 29-3 (18KO’s), he became the WBC mandatory challenger when the European Boxing Union and French Boxing Federation informed the WBC that Erland Betare was not available to fight. Hakkar was the reason Hopkins turned down Showtime's three fight deal when he found out that he would only get $1.1m to fight Hakkar in the first of the three fights, Hopkins found this unacceptable. Now the 37 yrold has to fight Hakkar anyway with no network contract, Showtime didn’t want to buy it without also having the rights to more appealing Hopkins bouts and HBO simply aren’t interested because Hakkar is unknown in the USA and deemed by many as a unworthy challenger.

Now I’m no boxing manager but I’m quite sure Hopkins choice to fight Morrade Hakkar rather than securing a network contract with either HBO or Showtime is a bad business decision, especially at the age of 37 when he could grow old over night. Hopkins choice to defend against Hakkar means we now have a C-class fighter challenging one of the greatest middleweights of all-time for the undisputed middleweight championship. You don’t have to be Manny Stewart or Teddy Atlas to realise there are better fights out there for Hopkins than Marrode Hakkar. Hakkar has not fought any name opponents and the step up against Hopkins will be a complete mismatch. The best Hakkar can hope for is to put up a good performance for three or four rounds before yielding to Hopkins supremency. Bernard Hopkins will defend his title against mandatory challenger Morrade Hakkar in March.

PREDICTION – 5th round TKO

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