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By Eric Baldwin: #2 WBC light heavyweight contender Joe Smith Jr. (23-1, 19 KOs) knocked out the 51-year-old Bernard Hopkins (55-8-2, 32 KOs) in the 8th round on Saturday night to end B-Hop’s long 28-year-old pro career at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
The 27-year-old Smith Jr. struggled through the first seven rounds with the boxing skills of Hopkins. However, in the 8th round, Smith caught Hopkins in the corner and landed five bone-crunching shots to the head that knocked him out of the ring. Hopkins said he was hurt and couldn’t get back in the ring.
Hopkins insisted that he’d been pushed out of the ring. It didn’t look that way.
I think at the end of the day, it was Smith’s youth, persistence and his punching power that led him to get the victory. Even if Hopkins hadn’t fell out of the ring, I think he was in serious trouble from the five big power shots that Smith had hit him with. Those were brutal head shots that Smith landed in the final sequence in the 8th that led to Hopkins falling out of the ring.
I don’t think Smith missed one punch. Smith landed at 100 percent accuracy with those final five head shots, and the look on Hopkins’ face at the time that he fell out of the ring was one of someone that was hurt by the shots. If Hopkins was injured from the fall out of the ring, then there’s not much you can do about that. But if Hopkins had stayed inside the ring, I think he would have gone down from those punches, because the ropes were holding him up, and that’s why he slid out of the ring. Hopkins was sliding down the ropes from the impact of the big power shots that he was hit with.
The official time of the stoppage by referee Jack Reiss was at 0:53 of round 8. That’s not a great way for the 51-year-old Hopkins to go out with him falling out of the ring like that, but he’s made up his mind that he doesn’t wish to continue his boxing career. Hopkins isn’t interested in fighting Smith Jr. in a rematch. It’s always possible that Hopkins could change his mind.
You never know. If he sees the fight on replay, he’ll understand that he appeared to be in the lead after seven rounds. All Hopkins needed to do was win a small handful of rounds in the last five rounds for him to get the victory. It’s just too bad that he suffered the injury, because he looked like he was going to win. Hopkins did a great job of moving, tying Smith Jr. and making him miss with almost all of his big power shots.
The replays showed that Hopkins was hit by a five straight punches to the head from Smith Jr. that caused him to fall out of the ring. The finishing punch from Smith Jr. was a left hook to the head of Hopkins that caused him to fall out of the ring. It looked like Hopkins fell out of the ring due to him getting hit with some bone crunching shots to the head.
“He shoved me out of the ring,” said Hopkins to HBO after the fight. “My angle got twist when I fell out of the ring. I couldn’t stand on my feet. If I wouldn’t have been pushed out of the ring, I believe he was starting to fade. I know I had the chin to get the win in the second half. He got frustrated. I can’t believe they gave him a TKO. They can call it a no contest but not a loss. The momentum from his body pushed me. I went out like a soldier. I’m not in a denial,” said Hopkins.
Smith did his job in chasing after Hopkins for seven rounds before finally catching up to him in the 8th round to bang him out.
The way that Hopkins went out on an injury stoppage was very similar to his first fight against Chad Dawson in 2011. In that fight, Dawson was getting the better of Hopkins for two rounds. Out of frustration of Hopkins falling onto his back, Dawson lifted Hopkins up and dropped him on the canvas, causing him to injure his left shoulder.
The fight was stopped when Hopkins couldn’t resume fighting, and the fight was later scored as a no contest. We can only hope that Hopkins’ loss tonight isn’t changed to a ‘no contest’ as well, because it sure appeared that he was knocked out of the ring by the effects of a punch from Smith Jr. It was a left hook to the head of Hopkins from Smith that knocked him out of the ring. There was no push, no elbow and no bumping into Hopkins like he says that happened.
Hopkins did a good job of walking around the ring to elude Smith Jr. in the first seven rounds. Boxing News 24 had Hopkins ahead in the fight five rounds to two going into the 8th. It looked like a fight that Hopkins was going to win going into the second half of the contest. Hopkins fought like an older version of Andre Ward with the way that he moved, landed quit pot shots, and tied Smith up to keep him from landing his big power shots.
Hopkins was frequently with his back against the ropes defending shots from Smith, but he did a great job each time making him miss with almost everything he threw. At the time, Hopkins was landing shot punches on the inside to get the better of Smith. I’m not sure if the judges saw what was going on, but it was clear to me that Hopkins was winning the fight.
It’s really not that surprising that Smith eventually caught Hopkins with some big power shots to get him out in round eight. Smith is a devastating puncher. Yeah, Smith maybe a crude fighter in terms of his boxing skills, but his punching power is first rate. There’s not too many guys in the light heavyweight division that can punch harder than Smith. With the shots that Smith caught Hopkins with in the last seconds of the fight, I can’t see Sergey Kovalev, Artur Beterbiev or Adonis Stevenson landing any harder than that. Smith has world class power, and he clearly had Hopkins shook as he was falling from the ring. That was not a push that sent Hopkins out of the ring. Those were all devastating head shots. I think Hopkins might have been too stunned to realize how he was knocked out of the ring. This was an old fashioned case of a fighter being knocked out of the ring from the effects of power shots rather than being pushed. If Smith’s training team could work on his ring skills, he could develop into a very good fighter in two or three years.
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