Hopkins vs Mayweather? Bernard would call it '50-50'

Bernard Hopkins has floated the idea of facing pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather in the recent past, but now the 49-year-old light heavyweight titleholder even has a name for the potential event: "50-50."

"After I become the undisputed light-heavyweight champion of the world, if there was one big fight out there, I know what I would call it -- 50-50. He wants to pass Marciano. He wants to get to 50 and I am 50. That would be huge. I would love to do that. But let me get past Stevenson first."

Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KO) outclassed Beibut Shumenov on Saturday to unify the IBF and WBA titles at 175 pounds, and next up he has his sights set on Adonis Stevenson, holder of the WBC and Ring Magazine championships. Were Bernard successful in that likely fight, only Sergey Kovalev and the WBO title would not be within his grasp, and while that fight would be hard to make due to network commitments and boxing's ongoing "Cold War," one has to hope there's some way that everyone could agree, even if for one fight, that history should at least be attempted.

As for a Mayweather fight, I still think it's silly. Hopkins says he can make the super middleweight limit of 168, or get down even to 165, but Mayweather has never weighed 165 pounds in his life, probably, and even when he fights with a limit of 154 pounds (he's done that three times), he never weighs in at the full limit. Floyd's simply not as big of a man as Bernard Hopkins is, and asking Mayweather to fight Bernard is unreasonable. I'm not saying it's not a fun fantasy, or something worth thinking about for kicks, but if Floyd has the very logical response to not fight Bernard Hopkins, I hope that nobody considers this to be Floyd "ducking" the fight.

Mayweather, of course, faces Marcos Maidana in a welterweight title unification on May 3.