With only a few hours to go a supremely confident Tavoris Cloud looks to claim his 26 straight win and retain his world Light Heavyweight IBF crown in New York. Can Hopkins do the unthinkable? History tells us that the only predictable thing about Hopkins is that you cannot predict how he will perform on an evening. A slippery customer of the highest degree, Hopkins has only won one in his last four outings whilst Cloud is looking to extend his unbeaten run and cement his own legacy at world level.
Although Hopkins maintains he is not concerned about his age, for this fight he seems to have done nothing but defend and justify himself as a near 50 year old fighter, that he can not only take what Tavoris Cloud has to give, but let the whole world into his secrets of his freakishly long service in the pugilistic art form to date.
“I don’t know what being a 48-year-old feels like. There are a lot of 48 year olds that aren’t in good shape. The pharmacy is making a killing off of them.”
“I’m 100 percent clean. I’m doing this off of nuts and bananas.
Well, let’s hope those bananas are doing the job and Bernard is not going nuts, because Cloud is not going into to that ring tonight to put on an exhibition.
Cloud said:
“I’m going to give the people their money’s worth…true sports entertainment for their dollar. I’m the undefeated IBF Light Heavyweight World Champion making my fifth title defence. The crowd will be with me because everybody wants to be with a winner.”
“I’d be a fool to get caught up in Bernard Hopkins’ mind games. That’s a fool’s game buying into those traps. When the bell rings on Saturday night, we’re both equals. I’ve got to go in there and hit him to show his tactics will not work against me.”
It seems that Cloud seemed to have finished the press conference winning the battle of the braggadocios, and is certainly not taking his opponent lightly:
“You have to go in there and hit him. Show him that his tactics don’t work. Bernard Hopkins is a fighter that you have to get straight to the point with. You can’t lollygag and bullsh*t because that’s his game. Being serious and doing my job throwing punches in the ring, that’s my game. I don’t come to put on a show for the people. I come to give the people a fight and give them their money’s worth; give them real entertainment.”
My money has to go on Cloud. By stoppage? – probably not. Hopkins has more tricks up his sleeve than Dynamo to slow a fighter down or drag them into an ugly fight, but he also has the ability to do the unthinkable, as we saw against Pavlik.
The majority of people from the public are classifying this fight under the ‘snooze fest’ banner, but if that’s the case, why are so many people attending the fight live and subscribing on TV? Simple – they want to see if a 48 year old legend can make history, or whether a 31 year old world champ can reign victorious.
Look forward to seeing how this one pans out….