Bernard Hopkins vs. Joe Smith Jr. results: Hopkins loses final fight after being knocked out of ring

Bernard Hopkins lost the final fight of his career on Saturday, falling to Joe Smith Jr. via TKO. The ending was strange, coming in the eighth round when Smith knocked Hopkins out of the ring. Rules say that Hopkins had 20 seconds to get into the ring but he was assisted outside the ring and after a long delay, the fight was called in favor of Smith.

Officially, Hopkins fell out of the ring and suffered an injury after a legal blow from Smith, giving Smith a TKO victory.

At the time of the knockout, Smith was ahead on points but not unanimously. He led 67-66 on Tim Cheatham’s scorecard and 69-64 on Thomas Taylor’s. Hopkins was leading 67-66 on judge Pat Russell’s scorecard.

In the first round, Smith kept the pressure on Hopkins and constantly pushed, but Hopkins defended well. Without about 30 seconds to go in the round, Smith landed a hard right that wobbled Hopkins and it may have been enough to give him the round.

Hopkins landed a decent probing right hand in the second round and opened up a cut on Smith with a headbutt. But the round was probably overall in favor of Smith. The third was more of the same, but Hopkins started to show life in the fourth, landing some combos and countering well, possibly winning the round.

The fifth was another round that could have went to Hopkins, who boxed well and kept active. But Smith came back in the sixth and landed a lot of body shots, thought before the match to be crucial to beating Hopkins. The seventh was a very close round, that Smith likely won because he was the aggressor.

The fight was advertised as the final professional boxing match for Hopkins, 51. He went into the match sporting a 55-7-2 record with 32 knockouts to his name. The pre-fight buildup was filled with Hopkins talking about knocking out Smith in any way he possibly can, but there were plenty of doubts this would happen given Hopkins hadn’t scored a stoppage since 2004 when he beat Oscar De La Hoya.

Hopkins hadn’t fought since a shutout loss to Sergey Kovalev over two years ago. Smith was coming off an upset victory over Andrzej Fonfara, scoring a first-round stoppage.

On the undercard, Oleksandr Usyk and Thabiso Mchunu faced off for the WBO cruiserweight title. Mchunu looked good at the start of the fight but Usuk took control and after winning a few rounds of his own, he finished Mchunu in the ninth round, retaining his title with TKO victory.

In the other televised undercard fight, featherweights Joseph Diaz Jr. and Horacio Garcia faced off. Diaz controlled the fight and never really looked in danger of losing to Garcia, and won by unanimous decision, 100-90, 100-90, 100-90.