Hopkins outpoints Shumenov, Porter punishes Malignaggi
IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KO’s) defeated WBA light heavyweight champion Beibut Shumenov (14-2, 9 KO’s) by a 12 round split decision on Saturday night at the DC Armory in Washington, DC.
One judge strangely scored it 114-113 in Shumenov's favour, but Hopkins' dominance was reflected in the other two scores of 116-111. Hopkins has now added the WBA belt to his IBF title.
The 49-year-old Hopkins, boxing's oldest world champion, confounded the younger Shumenov with his wily ring skills, flooring him in the 11th on the way to the split decision win.
He becomes the oldest man to unify world titles and can add this record to a long list of achievements, which includes numerous world title wins.
Shumenov, who is 19 years younger than the American, held his own in the early stages, but Hopkins started to dictate the pace.
His awkward style continued to frustrate Shumenov and Hopkins clinched the Kazakh to prevent him from fighting at close quarters.
Hopkins still retains enough power to hurt his opponents as he dropped Shumenov in the 11th with a punishing right hand.
But he was denied a first stoppage win in over a decade, with Shumenov standing firm until the final bell.
“I want to be the undisputed champion by the time I’m 50,” Hopkins said after the fight. The other major belts at 175 lbs is the WBC title held by Adonis Stevenson and the WBO belt held by Sergey Kovalev.
Also on the card, IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter (24-0, 15 KO’s) stopped former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KO’s) by a 4th round TKO.
Porter dominated the normally durable Malignaggi before flooring him with a chopping right hand to the head in the 4th round.
After Malignaggi got back up, Porter unleased a flurry of shots to put him down on his back for the second time in the round and the referee then stepped in and halted the fight.
Now Britain's Kell Brook is set to challenge Porter for his IBF title in the summer.
The Sheffield fighter is Porter's mandatory challenger and is scheduled to face the American before July 19.
Earlier in the night, Peter Quillin (31-0, 22 KO’s) defended his WBO middleweight title with a unanimous points win over Lukas Konecny (50-5, 23 KO’s) .
Quillin controlled the fight from the start and took the victory with scores of 120-108, 119-109, 119-109.