While it wasn’t pretty Joe Calzaghe shook off an early first round knockdown to out-hustle Bernard Hopkins to capture the world light-heavyweight championship by split decision. The final scores read 116-111, 115-112 Calzaghe and 114-113 Hopkins.

From the opening bell the 43-year old Hopkins looked to be the stronger man at 6’1” with bulging biceps. A Hopkins quick straight right hand counterpunch to the nose planted Calzaghe on his rear end early in the first. Calzaghe was wobbled but he regained his composure and weathered some more Hopkins rights to survive the opening frame. Calzaghe was cut on the bridge of the nose as he headed back to his corner but the cut was never a factor in the fight.

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It was evident early on what Hopkins game plan was as he threw counterpunches and potshots followed by immediate clinches. Hopkins had Calzaghe’s number in the early rounds using effective movement, counterpunching and cute defensive moves to throw Calzaghe off his game plan.

On the inside, Hopkins mauled and pounded Calzaghe with his dirty and savvy tactics. Around the 4th round however the tide turned in Calzaghe’s favor as he aggressively started getting looser and more fluid with combinations that Hopkins couldn’t answer.

Most of Calzaghe’s punches were glancing blows but Hopkins was fighting going backwards and throwing only one punch at a time. In round 7 things started to heat up with Calzaghe landing some crisp left hands coming forward while Hopkins leveraged some good right hand body shots into Calzaghe’s midsection.

Around the 9th round Hopkins speed started to diminish as he became more defensive minded and was unable to keep up with the British challengers work rate. In the 10th a tiring Hopkins went down from a supposed low blow but the replay showed the punch to be a glancing blow at best.

Hopkins, the cagey old vet that he is used the low blow to his advantage as he grimaced and took a full 3 minutes to regain his endurance. Once the action resumed Hopkins came on strong trying to flurry with Calzaghe but as the two traded Calzaghe was a fraction faster.

Both of these fighters had reputations as defensive artists and both they displayed great punch radars as evading punches with a great degree of skill. In the final two rounds Calzaghe was the fresher fighter as he stalked and flurried with punches against a visibly tired Hopkins who clinched at every opportunity.

In the end Hopkins was out landed 232 to 127 punches. The 232 punches Calzaghe landed was the most ever landed on Hopkins but most were of the pity pat variety. Calzaghe proved his authenticity in front of a Vegas crowd with plenty of pro-Calzaghe supporters that traveled from the UK to support their man.

Joe Calzaghe improves to a remarkable 45-0 with 22 title defenses and is now in line for big money fights against Roy Jones Jr., Kelly Pavlik or Glen Johnson.