New Champion Hopkins Isn’t Done Yet at LinesMaker.com

New Champion Hopkins Isn’t Done Yet

MONTREAL — Decades ago, a poor Bernard Hop­kins ran through the streets of his home­town in North Philadel­phia to evade the police, or some­one who was try­ing to catch him for some­thing he had just done.

A cou­ple decades later, Hop­kins ran those same streets again as a multi-millionaire boxer intent upon mak­ing history.

He did just that on Sat­ur­day when he pounded out a unan­i­mous deci­sion over Jean Pas­cal before 17,560 fans at the Bell Cen­tre to become, at 46 years, four months and six days, the old­est man to ever win a world box­ing cham­pi­onship. With the win, Hop­kins claims the World Box­ing Coun­cil light heavy­weight belt more than 16 years after he won his first world title, earn­ing it by scores of 116–112, 115–113 and 115–114.

He walked to the ring to the sound of his own voice croon­ing Frank Sinatra’s clas­sic, “My Way.” He hit the ground and did pushups in the sev­enth round when Pas­cal was late get­ting off the stool. And he fought a guy young enough to be his son on more than even terms before stamp­ing him­self in the his­tory books by sur­pass­ing George Fore­man as the old­est world champ. Fore­man was 45 when he knocked out Michael Moorer to win the heavy­weight title in Las Vegas in 1995.

Hop­kins nearly didn’t make it here. He spent a term in a Penn­syl­va­nia prison for strong-armed rob­bery and vowed as he left he’d never return. Remark­ably, he turned his life around and became an elite ath­lete obses­sively focused on treat­ing his body right.

He never drinks or smokes and is so dis­ci­plined that he spent many of his pre­vi­ous train­ing camps work­ing out in Miami’s trendy South Beach area, filled with hot night clubs, pretty women and temp­ta­tions that have destroyed many men.

“How many box­ing man­agers are going to let their fight­ers train in Miami Beach?” Hopkins said.

He promised his late mother, Shirley, that he wouldn’t fight past his 40th birth­day but couldn’t bring him­self to quit when he real­ized he still had so much to give to the sport. He’s now 7–3–1 after his 40th birth­day and pil­ing on achieve­ments to one of the great­est careers in box­ing history.

“If I would have kept my promise, you never would have got­ten to see the great fights I had right after that promise,” Hop­kins said, hold­ing a chain that he wears around his neck with his mother’s photo on it. “To me, it’s a trade­off. I’m glad I didn’t stay retired. I did retire, but I’m glad I didn’t stay retired, because I would have been mis­er­able as hell three, four, five years later know­ing that there were a lot of guys out there with his­tory attached to it who I could have beaten.”

Hop­kins was the mas­ter crafts­man through­out the fight. Pas­cal wound up hard, try­ing to take Hop­kins’ head off with just about every punch. Hop­kins, though, either made him miss entirely or was able to neu­tral­ize much of its power.

Pas­cal was unable to seri­ously hurt Hop­kins, who said he thrives on dis­man­tling the attack of young, aggres­sive fight­ers such as his opponent.

“He loads up on every shot and I know Pas­cal does that,” Hop­kins said. “He loads up on those shots because he knows he’s a puncher. He thinks he’s a puncher and he wants to blow the house down, like the big, bad wolf. … He gets so excited and he has the testos­terone going so high. He’s like, ‘Boom. Boom. Boom,’ and me, the old fox, wanted him to do that. I just leaned here, I leaned there and leaned there and you have a cou­ple of misses.”

A glum Pas­cal, who was 12 when Hop­kins won the Inter­na­tional Box­ing Fed­er­a­tion mid­dleweight title in 1995, con­ceded Hop­kins’ point. He said he was going for the knock­out early and noted he’d prob­a­bly try to adjust his tactics.

“Every time I throw, I try to hurt peo­ple,” Pas­cal said. “Maybe I need to change and be more slick.”

Nobody in box­ing is more slick than Hop­kins, who said he opted to train for the rematch against Pas­cal in his old haunts in North Philadel­phia. He said he wanted to remind him­self of old times, when life was a strug­gle and every­thing came hard.

He didn’t look appre­cia­bly dif­fer­ent phys­i­cally than he did at 26, but he was con­sid­er­ably smarter. He dis­played all the tricks in the book, man­ag­ing to hold when he needed a break, to maul Pas­cal on the inside exchanges and to gen­er­ally con­trol the pace and flow of the fight.

Fore­man, watch­ing on tele­vi­sion at his home in Texas, said he was thrilled to see Hop­kins break his mark.

“If my record goes down you want to see it go down that way,” Fore­man said. “If it was the Olympics, Bernard gets the gold medal and breaks the record for the world cham­pi­onship. This was the best I’ve seen him, the way Bernard took charge of the fight with a young strong cham­pion like Pas­cal. Long live the king.”

Hop­kins isn’t ready to bow out yet and will meet Chad Daw­son, a for­mer light heavy­weight cham­pion who defeated Adrian Dia­conu in the main preliminary bout.

Daw­son, work­ing for the first time with trainer Emanuel Stew­ard, tried to adopt a more offen­sive style, and expressed con­fi­dence he’ll be ready to deal with any­thing Hop­kins brings.

“At the end of the day, I have time on my side and I’m younger and faster,” Daw­son, 28, said.

Hop­kins has heard that one before, for years, from guys like Daw­son and Pas­cal. And more often than not, they’ve left puz­zled about what hap­pened, why they couldn’t solve the rid­dle of boxing’s star senior citizen.

“I do want to fight a major fight before the end of the year and I do want to keep the engine run­ning,” Hop­kins said. “I’m that aging car, the ’65 Lin­coln with sui­cide doors. I got to keep the car run­ning and keep it oiled and going around the block. I don’t have to drive it too far, but I want to keep the engine run­ning. If you sit around for six months, it’s too much for me. No mat­ter how great I look at 46, trust me: 46 is 46. I have to keep that engine run­ning. Even if I don’t bring it out of the garage, I have to start it up.”

When he does, it seems great things hap­pen. He wouldn’t put a limit on how long he’ll fight but did point out that he won’t become an oppo­nent and wind up tak­ing beatings.

He’ll get out before box­ing shoves him out. That time, though, doesn’t appear to be com­ing any time soon.

“He’s a leg­end and a great cham­pion,” Daw­son said in tribute.

And, unbe­liev­ably per­haps, the leg­end con­tin­ues to grow. The cur­tain isn’t ready to fall on this show yet.

Related Posts:

• Hop­kins Beats Pas­cal, Breaks Foreman’s Record
• Age Rel­a­tive to Vet­eran Box­ers Hop­kins, Johnson
• Hop­kins Becomes Old­est Cham­pion at 46
• Hop­kins to Wear Fly­ers Jer­sey into Ring
• Rank­ings: Heavy­weight Isn’t Deadweight

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