I caught up with Bernard Hopkins earlier today to discuss his October 15 title defense against Chad Dawson. “Bad Chad” is another young, athletic fighter that Hopkins is looking to outclass with his boxing IQ. An interesting sub-plot is Dawson being a southpaw. For his career, Hopkins has a dominant 12-1 record against left-handers. In the below excerpt, Hopkins talks about why Dawson will fall short next month. Be on the lookout for the full interview which will be posted during fight week.
I’ve fought many southpaws like you’ve mentioned. The slickest and most difficult southpaw I’ve faced was one of the old legends of boxing from my era and age [in] John David Jackson, who was in Philadelphia for many years. It was really challenging to face that guy but it paid off for me. That was the best teaching I ever got. I’m 12-1 with southpaws and the only loss was a split decision to Joe Calzaghe that can be argued to death. Chad’s brings the style of being young, reach longer than mine, [and] everything you look at in terms of physical advantages. But nobody mentions the IQ of the individual but me. That might be lost in the conservation between Chad Dawson’s endorsers or is being overlooked. Whatever he has I have better.
That doesn’t mean he’s not a quality opponent. Say there’s a car I want and there’s two cars there. There’s a Ferrari and there’s a Mercedes. I’m a take the Ferrari; he’s the Mercedes. That’s how I look at it. The Mercedes is not a bad car. Matter of fact, they do well in sales. But you know what that Ferrari is. It’s something exotic and special. No matter what Chad Dawson brings or has, and he has a lot of good attributes, there’s some weaknesses that I will expose on October 15 in front of millions of people. They’ll see my IQ versus a good, technical, has skills, and young athlete that hasn’t went to that [boxing] university.
Beats, Boxing and Mayhem 