THE bout was short on highlights, but Bernard Hopkins gave a lesson in efficiency as he retained his undisputed world middleweight title with a unanimous points victory over Howard Eastman. It was a conflict won in the battle room, not in the trenches. The British challenger pleaded for a rematch afterwards, but his frustration at being unable to impose his own tactics on the contest will be exacerbated when he discovers that he has no chance of facing Hopkins again.
Hopkins was not impressive, but he found the measure of Eastman with a simple but effective plan. He offered very little target to Eastman’s main weapon, his right cross, and after an almost tediously slow start, he caught the advancing challenger regularly with a countering left hook. Up close, Hopkins cramped Eastman, allowing him no space to work.
“He didn’t fight like a true champion, he ran from me the whole time,” Eastman, 34, said. “He was the champion in his own backyard and I dictated the pace. I would expect him to stick it to me more.” He said that Hopkins had agreed in the ring to another meeting.
Of course, Eastman’s worries matter little to Hopkins. “I didn’t want to bore anybody, but I can’t have been running too much, judging by the lumps on his face,” Hopkins said. “The smart man in boxing lives to fight another day. I wanted to fight my fight, not Eastman’s.”
The bottom line is that Hopkins, at 40, has less than a year left in his career and wants big-money pay-per-view matches. The contest with Eastman had not made it to pay-per-view status and after the crowd regularly booed the lack of action, there will be little interest and even less benefit for Hopkins for a rematch.
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While Eastman asked to do it again, Hopkins spoke of Jermain Taylor, an unbeaten former US Olympian, Félix Trinidad, the Puerto Rican legend, and Glen Johnson, the world’s No 1 light-heavyweight. He spelt out what his main motivation was for the next year: “M O N E Y, no more mandatories,” he said.
It is understandable that Eastman was frustrated. Far from being soundly beaten, the Londoner made the pace but was picked off. Hopkins was just that little bit quicker to the punch and that tiny margin translates to a lot when played out over 36 minutes of action.
The punch statistics made grim reading for Eastman, who landed just 82 of the 609 punches that he threw (Hopkins landed 148 of 346). Even more remarkable was Eastman’s lack of success with his jab, landing just 16 of 260 thrown.
But Eastman’s opportunity possibly went in the opening few rounds, when Hopkins, a notoriously slow starter, seemed intent on waiting for Eastman to take the initiative. It took Eastman until the fifth round, in which he had predicted he would win, to start throwing punches with any sort of frequency and while he landed some solid rights, the left hook landed by Hopkins just before the bell emerged as a precursor of what was to come.
The champion had a good round in the sixth, and from then on it was virtually one-way traffic. When Eastman tried to land on Hopkins from distance he fell short; when he was in close he was tied up; often, he was caught in between and was hammered with a left. The three judges gave Hopkins the decision by 117-111, 116-112 and 119-110, although the last score, by Lou Filippo, the only American judge, seemed harsh on Eastman.
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So Hopkins had created history, his 20th successful defence making him the only middleweight to join an exclusive club including boxers such as Joe Louis and Larry Holmes who have passed that figure.
If Eastman boxes on for two years, he looks certain to get another world-title shot as Hopkins’s unified title dissolves. At least he is now a known and respected name on the world scene.