48-year-old IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (53-6-2, 32 KO’s) says he’s going to go right after his opponent Karo Murat’s nose right off the bat on July 13th in their fight at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, USA. This will be Hopkins’ first defense of his title after beating Tavoris Cloud by a 12 round unanimous decision last March to take his title.
Hopkins was hoping to get a bigger fight against the likes of Carl Froch but he had no other choice but to face Murat (25-1-1, 15 KO’s), as he was his mandatory challenger and it was either fight him or risk losing the title by having it stripped from him.
Hopkins said to fightnews.com “He eats jabs. He doesn’t move his head…I will be working on the beak.”
IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko may pull out of his October 5th fight with WBA heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin unless the two can come together and agree on the drug testing for their fight at the Olimpiyskiy in Moscow, Russia. 
Golden Boy Promotions has done a good job of parking their fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30’s) in the junior middleweight division instead of at middleweight, which is where the 172 lb. Canelo should be fighting given his weight. But by parking Canelo at a weight that he’s barely making at 154, Canelo has big advantage over the welterweights that Golden Boy is matching against him.
WBC interim light welterweight champion Lucas Matthysse (34-2, 32 KO’s) appears to have finally cornered WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (26-0, 16 KO’s) after chasing him with no luck for the past year. Garcia, 25, is now in a situation where he has to fight Matthysse this September or else risks having the World Boxing Council strip his WBC strap from him for failing to face his mandatory challenger. 
WBA super middleweight champion super middleweight champion Andre Ward says he’s open to a rematch with IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch this year, whether in the UK or the United States, as long as Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn shows him how badly he wants to make that fight happen.
Miguel Cotto (37-4, 30 KO’s) is still trying to decide whether he’ll be fighting on September 28th or another date this year for his next fight, according to RingTV. Golden Boy Promotions booked the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York for September 28th, hoping that Cotto will choose to fight on that date, but he’s still undecided.
(Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda) Bernard Hopkins was very impressed with the power that he saw from WBC interim light welterweight champion Lucas Matthysse (34-2, 32 KO’s) in his 3rd round TKO win over Lamont Peterson (31-2-1, 16 KO’s) last night. Hopkins compared Matthysse’s power to that of a heavyweight due to his three knockdowns of the normally strong-chinned Peterson.