THE CANADIAN PRESS
QUEBEC — Jean Pascal has retained his WBC light heavyweight title, but it was by the slimmest of margins against a 45-year-old Bernard Hopkins who looked like the younger man in the ring.
Two early knockdowns by the 28-year-old Pascal proved to be enough as the champion from Montreal and the Philadelphia veteran known as The Executioner fought to a majority draw before more than 16,000 roaring fans at the Pepsi Colisee.
American judge Steve Morrow had it 114-112 for Hopkins, but Canadian Claude Paquette scored it a 113-113 draw and Belgian Daniel Van de Wiele had it 114-114. The two draws outweighed the one scored in favour of Hopkins and that made it a majority draw. The Canadian Press had it 114-114, with Pascal winning five rounds (two by two points) and Hopkins seven.
"I thought I won," said Pascal, whose face was swollen and red after the bout while Hopkins came away with just a few scrapes. "It wasn’t my best fight, but Bernard likes to fight dirty.
"I dropped him twice. We have fair judges in Canada."
There was some early debate over whether the Canadian and Belgian judges’ cards had been altered, but that notion was discarded by both camps. Hopkins reluctantly accepted a draw on Pascal’s turf, even if he felt he won.
Now he wants to have a rematch against Pascal, although not in Canada.
"I come to Canada and face a 28-year-old guy and I get a draw, at 45 years old?" Hopkins said in amazement. "You saw a young guy running from an old grandpa."
Pascal’s promoter Yvon Michel says he doesn’t expect the WBC to order a rematch, but he is willing to listen to offers from Hopkins’ camp.
Hopkins went for the knockout in the final round, and Pascal replied in kind in three minutes of furious fighting.
The man fans call B-Hop said he wanted badly to break former heavyweight George Foreman’s record of winning a world title at 45 years 10 months — Hopkins turns 46 on Jan. 15. He feels he will get it in a rematch.
"Look at my record — anyone I fought twice I destroyed," he said.
All the post-fight acrimony, that included shouting matches between members of the two camps at what was supposed to be a post-fight news conference, came after what was a rousing, classic battle between Pascal’s youthful athleticism and Hopkins’ smarts and experience.
It was all Pascal early, although Hopkins complained that it was a blow to the back of the head that caused him to go down in the dying seconds of the first, which Montreal referee Michael Griffin scored a knockdown.
The knockdown was more clear-cut in the third as Pascal tagged the former middleweight king with a left and saw him drop to the canvas but get up right away.
Starting in the sixth, Pascal seemed to wear down from all the early fury, stopped throwing punches and was tagged repeatedly through the next six rounds.
Hopkins launched a desperate flurry in the final round but failed to put Pascal down.
"The 12th round was vicious," said Hopkins. "He looked to be tired from the sixth round. He was gasping. He held every time I got close. And I just kept coming forward throwing punches. He was holding on for dear life."
Russ Anber, a fight trainer and broadcaster who helped trainer Marc Ramsay in Pascal’s corner, said the pre-fight hype that Hopkins had slowed down with age was proved wrong.
"I told you this guy is a phenomenon," said Anber. "He is not like anybody else.
"Being 45 years old didn’t matter. If Jean would have won, you’d be saying he beat a 45-year-old guy. This is one of the greatest athletes of our generation. Jean fought tooth and nail with him and no matter what Jean did, he found a way to adapt. He did a great performance and Jean stayed right with him. Both put on an outstanding performance."
Pascal was making the fourth defence of the WBC he won from fellow Montreal fighter Adrian Diaconu in June, 2009.
His 11-round victory by technical decision in August over highly regarded Chad Dawson added the minor IBO title to his collection and won him recognition as the world’s best light-heavyweight by The Ring magazine.
Hopkins, whose pro career began in 1988 when Pascal was five, won the IBF middleweight title in 1995 and defended it 20 times against some of the biggest names in the sport before he was beaten twice in a row by Jermain Taylor in 2005.
He moved up to light heavyweight and won five of his next six bouts, including a 12-round decision over the faded Roy Jones Jr., in his last outing in April.
In the co-feature, Paul Malignaggi (28-4) of New York rebounded from his loss to Amir Khan in a WBA title bout to take out Michael Lozado (36-7-1) of Mexico in the sixth round of their 10-rounder. It was the first time the light-hitting Malignaggi has stopped an opponent ahead of the distance since a six-round victory over Kevin Watts in 2003.
There were no compelling bouts on the undercard.
The crowd roared as local welterweight Kevin Bizier (13-0) dismantled American Ronnie Warrior (13-4-1), who failed to come out for the fourth of the scheduled eight rounds, and heavyweight Eric Bahoeli (6-0) won all six rounds over Ruben Rivera (3-5).
Lumbering English heavyweight Tyson Fury (13-0) was supposed to be walked into the ring by Canadian legend George Chuvalo, but when his fight with Zack Page (21-33-2) began, the Canadian legend was in his seat, telling Fury’s promoter he was tired. He saw six-foot-nine Fury win all eight rounds but fail to take out the much smaller Page.
Super-middleweight Daniel Jacob (21-1) stopped fellow American Jesse Orta (7-14-2), who was in his first bout in more than two years, in five one-sided rounds.
Somehow, the boxing commission sanctioned a middleweight bout between American Peter (Kid Chocolate) Quillan (22-0), and Martin Desjardins of the Quebec City, now 7-19-4 after quite predictably being knocked out in the first round.
At ringside were IBF champions Lucian Bute and Steve Molitor (who will both fight March 19 in Montreal), super-middleweight contender Glen Johnson, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Canadian Olympic Association president Marcel Aubut and former hockey tough guy Georges Laraque.