At first I laughed, then because Bernard Hopkins is such a good speaker I became intrigued. Here is what B-Hop had to say.
“Floyd, his skills are so out there that he can risk going up to 160,” Hopkins said. “It isn’t the weight that is going to win the fight, it’s the skills. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The only guy who is going to beat a guy like Floyd Mayweather is a master chess player. And who is the master chess player? I’ll go back to 160. It’s the biggest old [man] fight. Everyone from the nursing home will be watching.”
“I will go to New Orleans or some place hot, I will train like a dog, and I will make an extraordinary fight,” Hopkins said. “If I was coming from [heavyweight] to [light heavyweight] like Roy Jones did, then it would be a problem. But being a guy who lives the way I live… for me to come down to 160, it’s doable.”
“When your name is Money, money moves you,” Hopkins said. “It would be a chess game. He would have the burden. You can’t let a 49-year-old go the distance with you. It would have to be a rumble. It wouldn’t be easy, This man has a defense that it would be a counterpunching fight.”
Hopkins is currently fighting in the light heavyweight division (175 pound limit) and Mayweather to be honest is more of a Junior Welterweight (140) than a Welterweight (147) or Junior Middleweight (154).
My first thought was to dismissed the idea completely, but it was the first sentence of the last paragraph of Hopkins quotes that at least will keep a flicker of hope of this alive.
When your name is MONEY, money moves you.
It wouldn’t be the most visually pleasing fight, but it would be intriguing to see 49 year old Hopkins in the ring with Mayweather. More importantly it would generate money.
It is still likely to be Amir Khan or Danny Garcia facing Mayweather in May, but you never know they said Manny Pacquiao vs. Oscar De La Hoya would never happen either.