Calzaghe dethrones Hopkins in U.S. debut!

How wrong I was regarding my prediction going into this fight. As one of the biggest Hopkins fans in the universe (as you might've suspected with my posts leading up to this fight), that fight was very difficult for me to watch. Although it was not an artistic masterpiece by any means from either pugilist, Joe Calzaghe was the more active fighter and did more than enough to seize Bernard Hopkins' light heavyweight championship with a narrow split decision.

Hopkins managed to drop Calzaghe with a straight right hand in the first round. Calzaghe was not hurt by any means, but he was squared up and caught off balance by the punch. From that point forward, it was Calzaghe would got into a workman like rhythm, much like he did against Mikkell Kessler, and basically out hustled Hopkins for the remainder of the fight.

Calzaghe hit Hopkins with a low blow in round 10, at which point Hopkins took a few minutes time out to recover. He probably took more time that he actually needed just to break up the momentum that Calzaghe had built up. It didn't work, however, as Calzaghe continued to press Hopkins in the championship rounds. Calzaghe hit Hopkins with another low blow in round 11, but on that occassion, Hopkins resumed the action rather quickly.

At the end of the day, Hopkins probably landed the cleaner punches throughout the fight, but Calzaghe landed so many more punches and completely out worked the 43 year old Hall of Famer. Hopkins certainly didn't embarrass himself with his performance in the fight. For a man who is 43 years of age, he showed that he could still compete on the top level with a younger undefeated champion, but he just didn't have enough in the tank of hold off the high punch output of Calzaghe.

Official scores for the fight were 114-113 Hopkins, 115-112 and 116-111 for Calzaghe. Boxing Chronicles also scored the fight 116-111 for the new champion.