| Hopkins knocks out De La Hoya with a blow to the liver One of the most anticipated boxing matches of this year took place in Las Vegas - the fight for the title of absolute world middleweight champion. In the ninth round, American Bernard Hopkins knocked out his compatriot Oscar de la Hoya with a powerful left blow to the body.
They have been wanting to see these fighters in the same ring for a very long time. Confrontations between antipodes like Hopkins and de la Hoya always attract the attention of the public. Especially when this dissimilarity is expressed so clearly.
Hopkins is a former bad guy. At the age of 14, he nearly died after being stabbed in the lung, and three years later he was arrested for armed robbery and spent five years in prison. After his release, Bernard embarked on the path of correction, finally broke with his dark past and took up boxing seriously, gradually, year after year, making his way to the top. At this very top, 39-year-old Hopkins, who has the threatening nickname Executioner, has been sitting at this very top for ten years. It was in 1994 that he won his first middleweight title, and since then no one has been able to knock him off that throne. However, this fact did not bring him much fame or exorbitant fees, which the same de la Hoya began to receive almost from his first fight in the professional ring, where he moved after winning the 1992 Olympics.
Oscar has always been a true superstar. The Golden Boy owes his multimillion-dollar fortune and universal love primarily to his cinematic appearance, and only then to his boxing talents. Yes, he won many beautiful victories in the ring, became a champion in five different weight categories, but there are many outstanding personalities in the ring, and the unofficial title of the most popular boxer among non-heavyweights has long been and, it seems, forever attached to de la Hoya.
“After our fight, Oscar will have to undergo plastic surgery. “I’m ready for all the women in America to hate me,” said Hopkins before the fight, who did not hide his hatred for everyone’s favorite. Things haven't been going well for the Golden Boy lately. A year ago he lost his WBA and WBC junior middleweight titles to Shane Moseley, and earlier this summer he scored a painful victory over the not-so-formidable German Felix Sturm. However, this victory brought him not only the WBO middleweight title (the fourth most important after the WBC, IBF and WBA titles), but also the opportunity to enter the ring against Hopkins, who was ready to put his absolute champion title on the line.
Oscar took a big risk, planning to enter the ring as a middleweight for only the second time, and even immediately against a hitherto undefeated champion. Almost all the experts vied with each other to say that de la Hoya would certainly lose. Even his friend, the famous boxer Ray Leonard (whose legendary fight seventeen years ago against Marvin Hagler, by the way, was compared to the fight between de la Hoya and Hopkins), bet on the Golden Boy. “Bernard is too experienced, too powerful and too formidable to lose. De la Hoya made a mistake by agreeing to go against him,” was the majority opinion.
De la Hoya took on the role of an outsider for the first time, but was still confident of his victory. At least in words. “Since I agreed to fight this fight, it means I’m ready to win. I am sure that the champion belt will go to me,” Oscar did not skimp on such standard phrases before the fight.
The crowd that filled the stands of the MGM Grand Center was clearly opposed to Hopkins, and every successful action of the Golden Boy was greeted with a roar of approval. Until the middle of the fight, there was an equal fight in the ring, and in the sixth segment, Hopkins’ advantage began to emerge, which reached its apogee by the eighth round. And already in the ninth, de la Hoya’s hopes for victory collapsed simultaneously with himself. Hopkins still took pity on the Golden Boy's face and sealed his victory with a crushing blow to the liver, which forced his opponent to writhe on the floor in pain. For the first time, Oscar was knocked out. And Hopkins became the first boxer in history to win four of the most prestigious championship belts at once.
For victory, Bernard will receive $10 million - the largest fee of his career. Oddly enough, de la Hoya will get much more - 30 million. This is exactly how much his career is worth. Oscar himself said before the fight that the outcome of the fight with Hopkins would decide everything for him. But Hopkins has every right to make plans for the future. Among them, noteworthy is his desire, voiced after the fight with de la Hoya, to take revenge on Roy Jones Jr., to whom Bernard lost 11 years ago and has not lost to anyone since then. Anton VALIEV |
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