One can hear the groans, the screams and the pleas already: Gennady Golovkin, the most feared fighter on the planet, against a 50-something Bernard Hopkins, in a genuinely dangerous fight for the former middleweight and light-heavyweight king. “Don’t do it, Champ!” the man on the street bellows. But, as crazy as it sounds, this particular “Dream Fight” (or nightmare, call it what you will) could, possibly, maybe, happen.
Tom Loeffler, GGG’s promoter, was speaking with the media in New York yesterday and, as quoted by RingTV.com, Loeffler said he cannot rule out a fight between his unbeaten terror and the Philadelphia legend.
“The priority would be Canelo or a unification fight with (WBO ruler) Billy Joe Saunders but Bernard is another one,” Loeffler said on the subject of possible fights for GGG. “If we can’t get one of those fights, if we can’t get a Danny Jacobs type of fight or [Gilberto] Ramirez then Bernard would certainly be a..He’s a legend. It would be a huge name for him. He’s physically much bigger than Gennady. Bernard has never been stopped in his career. Gennady has a long knockout streak, so you’d have two forces coming together and that’s a very interesting fight.”
Interesting maybe, but realistic – in realistic that even a proven miracle worker such as Hopkins would have even a small shot at getting a win? We all know Golovkin is struggling to get the big name-fights he and his considerable talents deserve. We also know Hopkins is either crazy enough or brave enough (take your pick) to take the fight. Hopkins stunned us all when he agreed to take on the hardest punching light-heavyweight on the planet, Sergey Kovalev. But Hopkins lost that one, and took considerably more punishment than in any other fight of his long and storied career in the process. So we have to ask: how bad would things be for B-Hop, almost two years older, against Golovkin?
The fight, if it happened (and it’s doubtful but some weird match-ups have been made recently – just look at Canelo-Amir Khan) would no doubt attract its share of bad publicity; perhaps more bad than good, but we all know people would watch it. Golovkin, who recently stated how the aforementioned Canelo-Khan fight is “bad for boxing,” would probably face the likelihood of being called a hypocrite if he agreed to get it on with a man as old as Hopkins.
To his credit, GGG is not in any way pushing for the fight, understanding as he does how the fight would attract its critics.
“First of all, he is a legend,” Golovkin stated. “And, second part, maybe people [would] say, ‘Hey, Gennady, no please. It’s not good.”
If Canelo beats Khan and then agrees to give GGG, and the world, the fight he wants, all talk of a Golovkin-Hopkins fight surely go away. But, if Golovkin can’t get the middleweight super-fight, or another title fight at 160.…..? Who knows!