Bernard Hopkins has sent Amir Khan an ominous warning of the risks involved in challenging a bigger fighter, suggesting Saul Alvarez will eventually catch him even if he makes a promising start to Saturday's fight.
The accepted wisdom is that Khan, as both naturally smaller and faster than Alvarez, can only secure an unlikely victory by keeping the fight at range, landing scoring punches on the WBC champion and then using his feet to elude Alvarez's superior strength.
America's Hopkins is among the greatest middleweights in history and is widely respected for his achievements in that division, when he defeated decorated challengers like Oscar De La Hoya, before later succeeding as the often-smaller man at light-heavyweight.
It is his 2004 fight with De La Hoya that Hopkins considers most similar to Saturday's between Khan and Alvarez at Las Vegas' T-Mobile Arena - he stopped De La Hoya with a body shot in the ninth round.
In the same way De La Hoya could not recover from the punch from the bigger fighter, he had also built an early lead through using his superior speed, and Hopkins believes Alvarez will pose his greatest threat in the second half of the fight, when Khan's efforts may lead to him tiring.
"Oscar was leading slightly on the scorecards because of speed," said Hopkins, 51.
"I knew, from my trainer, to get close, and to let my hands go when I get close. Not get close and not do anything: get close and throw punches.
"Eventually, I believe the seventh, eighth, ninth round, I started getting close to Oscar, but until I closed the distance, and let that size of mine play a factor more than it would have done (on the) outside - to try and box him and try to outpoint him or outspeed him - it wasn't going to happen."
Hopkins, alongside Roy Jones Jnr, Roberto Duran, Marco Antonio Barrera, De La Hoya, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, is one of the many great fight figures in Vegas to watch Saturday's fight.
Few expect Khan to pull off what would be a sensational victory, two divisions above his natural weight, and his compatriot Lewis added: "I think you can really tell in the later rounds if you get hit.
"That's when you're going to really feel it from a guy that weighs more than you."
Source: PA
