Jean Pascal Is No Roy Jones As He Earns Controversial Draw with Bernard Hopkins

The veteran 45-year-old Bernard Hopkins went for a record tonight for the oldest major title belt champion as he entered the ring very calmly to face his opponent, the Canadian light heavyweight WBC champion Jean Pascal who appeared nervous and anxious.

The sold out 16,000-plus crowd at Pepsi Coliseum in Quebec City could not be more happier with their hometown hero, Pascal, as he provided early satisfaction with his knock downs of Bernard Hopkins in the first and third rounds.

One would assume Pascal had the fight in the bag after the second knockdown. It even appeared that he was even holding back at this point and did not want to finish off the much older veteran Hopkins.

As the rounds went on, Pascal seemed to give away much of the rounds only throwing one or two power shots aiming at the head of Hopkins. Bernard was clearly out-boxing, out-pointing and simply throwing more punches to a Pascal who was mysteriously not doing anything at all.

Hopkins was landing clean effective body shots on Pascal sometimes doubling up and landing body shot after body shot to the champion's body who was, for the most part, just backing up to avoid any kind of exchange.

Pascal's Achilles' heel which is his lack of stamina may have very well caused him to give away so many of the middle to late rounds to the significantly more active Hopkins.

Hopkins, who does not possess any true punching power, was never able to really hurt or even clearly dominate the younger champion. Bernard just simply won round after round due to just throwing punches when Pascal did not throw anything back.

Going into the championship rounds it seemed the fight was dead even on many of the press row score cards, and judges score cards. Hopkins was still the more active fighter trying to hurt the champion without any success.

Even in the 12th and final round Hopkins was the far more aggressive fighter pressing the action and bullying the younger Pascal, but not really landing anything big or meaningful.

As the final bell rang, Hopkins was all smiles with his hands held up as the winner as Pascal seemed like he thought he failed and looked like he would rather take a nap instead.

The judges scored the fight a majority draw: 114-112 Hopkins, 114-114 and 113-113.

In the post-fight interview, Hopkins was protesting as usual as he at first did not care to even answer any questions from Jim Gray. He then went on to dispute the knock downs claiming they were illegal behind-the-head shots.

It is ironic that Hopkins complained so adamantly about the knockdowns being caused by illegal behind the head punches when he himself is notorious for doing the very same thing his entire career with excessive intentional rabbit punching, headbutting and of course testicle punches.

However, in all fairness to Hopkins, he fought tonight as clean as Bernard Hopkins could fight. He looked good for a 45-year-old fighter, but then again anyone would against a fighter who did not do anything for seven of the last rounds of the fight.

Earlier this week I wrote an article stating that if Jean Pascal was the one to finally retire Bernard Hopkins and save us from the most boring and dirty fighter of our time then I would be his fan for life.

Pascal did not provide this result in any way shape or form. In fact because Pascal fought so poorly for the second half of the fight he may have even encouraged Hopkins to keep on fighting on.

Many have been comparing Pascal to Roy Jones and he himself says he adored and looked up to Jones more than any other fighter.

Roy Jones was the only fighter to ever really thoroughly dominate Hopkins and he even did it with one hand.

It is uncertain where Pascal goes from here as he was initially slated to bigger and better fights with his fellow countryman Lucian Bute and a rematch with Carl Froch. After his horrible performance against a 45-year-old veteran with no true power or speed and ending in a gift draw it seems both of those fighters would now be the clear favorite over him.

Pascal must work on his conditioning and stamina should he really want to be back on track to being considered the next big thing in the 175-lb. division.

Prior to the fight Pascal said, "I don't want to be the next Roy Jones, I want to be the first Jean Pascal." Well, he does not have to worry about that for he is no Roy Jones.

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