Hopkins, Bernard 1965–
Bernard Hopkins 1965–
Boxer
Bernard Hopkins has been nicknamed the Executioner for the way he dispatches opponents and for the way he enters the ring before a fight—with his minions following him clad in enormous black hoods and carrying huge axes. Despite his showmanship and his penchant for saying the outrageous, Hopkins has become the first undisputed middleweight champion since Marvelous Marvin Hagler. When he outpunched the previously invincible Felix Trinidad in September of 2001, he unified the World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Council (WBC), and International Boxing Federation (IBF) middleweight titles. Hopkins’s life outside the ring has come together as well. He has been married to his wife, Jeanette, since 1993, and the couple have one daughter.
Bernard Hopkins was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 5, 1965. Life for the undisputed middleweight champion has not always been rosy. The son of Bernard and Shirley Hopkins, he grew up in Philadelphia as one of eight children. From an early age Hopkins was an aggressive child and seemed to attract trouble. In 1979 at the age of 13 he was stabbed on the subway and suffered a punctured lung. The knife narrowly missed his heart, and he spent six months in the hospital recovering from the attack. As he got older he began to intimidate people. Stealing chains, clothing and money landed him in front of a judge on many occasions. While his high school classmates were graduating, Hopkins was graduating from reform school to the penitentiary. One judge handed the 17-year-old eleventh grader two sentences—one for five to twelve years and one for three to six years. Hopkins told Ron Heard of BoxingTalk.net about his time in prison: “I saw a lot of things in prison that aren’t clean or nice to talk about. I was seventeen years old. I didn’t consider myself dangerous, but I was surrounded by killers, rapists, child molesters, skinheads, Mafia types, so I was in a dangerous situation. I saw a guy stabbed to death with a makeshift ice pick in an argument over a pack of cigarettes.”
Despite the hardships of life behind bars, Hopkins was grateful for his prison experience, because he woke up from his life of petty theft. After almost five years behind bars, the 22-year-old was released, having earned a GED and learned some hard lessons. Hopkins went back to his old Philadelphia neighborhood with
At a Glance…
Born Bernard Hopkins on January 5, 1965, in Philadelphia, PA; married Jeanette Hopkins; children: Latrice.
Career: Professional boxer. Lost first professional bout to Clinton Mitchell, 1988; won 22 consecutive fights, 1988-93; lost first title bout to Roy Jones, 1993; captured vacant IBF middleweight title, defeating Segundo Mercado, 1995; captured WBC middleweight title, defeating Keith Holmes, 2001; captured WBA middleweight title, defeating Felix Trinidad, 2001; broke Carlos Monzon’s record of 15 straight middleweight title defenses, defeating Carl Daniels, 2002.
Addresses: Home —Philadelphia, PA. Office —c/o Norman Horton, 5780 W. Centinela Ave., Suite 409, Los Angeles, CA 90045.
nine years of parole hanging over his head, but he also had a resolve to make something of his life despite the odds against him. He decided his avenue to success would be through boxing.
Hopkins started fighting four-round preliminary bouts while working as a cook. His first professional fight, which he lost, came in 1988. The natural middleweight had been stuffed with fast food to move up to the light heavyweight division, where he was sluggish and slow. After the loss and the poor treatment by his manager, Hopkins was so discouraged with boxing that he did not fight again for almost a year and a half. When he returned to the ring, he had a new manager, and fought either as a middleweight at 160 pounds or a super middleweight at 168. Hopkins won 22 straight fights and then in May of 1993 he faced Roy Jones for the IBF middleweight title. The fight should have been his first big payday, but Hopkins maintained he was only paid $70, 000 for a championship bout, while his promoter, Butch Lewis, received a $700, 000 fight fee. Hopkins lost the fight after he was out-pointed in 12 rounds, and a career that had been on the rise since 1989 seemed to stall.
In 1995 Hopkins captured the vacant IBF middleweight title in a fight with Segundo Mercado, but his career was not taking off. In October of 1996 he was harshly criticized for refusing a second fight with Jones. Hopkins had begun to question the role of boxing promoters and their share of the boxer’s purse and, for Hopkins, the issue was not Jones, but the fact that he felt promoter Butch Lewis was taking advantage of him. The Los Angeles Daily News called his situation “pitiable,” because he had turned down the Jones fight even though at 30 years old he was still working part-time in a transmission shop to make ends meet. In an article by Jay Searcy of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Hopkins said, “I’ll be a grease monkey the rest of my life before I let anybody screw me again. [Lewis] has been underpaying me since I started. I’m not ducking Jones. I’ve never ducked anybody.”
Despite the legal wrangling, Hopkins continued to fight and defend his title, cruising through the middleweight division. But because of his stand against promoters and managers, and perhaps because of the lack of quality in the middleweight division, the million-dollar payday evaded the champion. The only misfortune for Hopkins was a 1998 bout with Robert Allen involving celebrated referee and television judge Mills Lane. While the referee was trying to separate the two fighters, Lane caught Hopkins at an awkward angle and Hopkins fell out of the ring and injured his ankle. The fight was declared a “no contest,” but Hopkins would gain a technical knockout over Allen six months later.
Also in 1999 Hopkins was one of the few active fighters to testify before a New York City task force set up to investigate the relationship between boxers and promoters. Hopkins said that several promoters told him not to appear before the panel, but he told Franz Lidz of Sports Illustrated: “Prizefighters get mistreated, exploited, out-and-out robbed every day. Either you crusade for reform or you become part of the problem. As a champion, I feel an obligation to take a stand.” Hopkins was both self-managed and self-promoted and perhaps that explains why, after 11 title defenses, he earned $450, 000 for his 2000 bout with Syd Vanderpool.
When the undefeated Felix Trinidad moved up to the middleweight division, promoter Don King devised a series of fights among all the middleweight champions that were designed to serve as a way for Trinidad to claim those titles along with the belts he had won when he vanquished Oscar De La Hoya. Hopkins met WBC champ Keith Holmes and Trinidad took on WBA champ William Joppy. Trinidad beat Joppy and Hopkins defeated Holmes in a 12-round decision. The fight between Hopkins and Trinidad was set for September 15, 2001, and the winner would unify the middleweight title for the first time since the mid-1980s. A victory by Hopkins would also tie legendary Argentine Carlos Monzon’s record of 15 middleweight title defenses. The whole series of bouts was designed to legitimize Trinidad as a middleweight and then give him a shot at the best fighter in boxing—Roy Jones.
In the usual hype leading up to a major prizefight, Hopkins became known for his Tysonesque ravings. He twice stepped on the Puerto Rican flag to insult Trinidad—who is Puerto Rican—and his fans. The second time, he stepped on the flag while actually in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and provoked a riot. Even when the fight was postponed for two weeks after the September llth terrorist attacks, Hopkins had the poor taste to wear a baseball cap with WAR printed on it, and to compare Trinidad and his fans to terrorists. At one point his antics almost caused a relocation of the fight from Madison Square Garden in New York City, a venue not far from ground zero, because officials were so offended by his insensitivity. By the eve of the fight, though, both fighters were expressing their solidarity with New Yorkers, and Hopkins had apologized. Hopkins was paid $100, 000 by an online casino to wear its website on his back in the form of a temporary tattoo, and he took the entire sum and bet it on himself at 5-2 odds. Few others bet on the 36-year-old fighter against the 28-year-old undefeated Trinidad. The prestige of both fighters was reflected in their purses. Trinidad received $8 million while the long-time champion Hopkins was paid $2.8 million. But a funny thing happened on the way to Trinidad’s coronation—Hopkins won.
Because of his inflammatory statements before the fight, the strongly pro-Trinidad crowd booed lustily every time Hopkins’s face appeared on the overhead monitors at Madison Square Garden. But Hopkins was such an underdog that by the tenth round, when he had Trinidad on the ropes, the crowd was chanting his name. After the fight even Trinidad called him a great champion and a good fighter. Hopkins told Steve Stringer of The Los Angeles Times that he had a sure-fire strategy coming into the fight: “De La Hoya gave me a little game plan on how to beat Trinidad. He was so confident because he didn’t know I was going to be that elusive. Trinidad only has one style of fighting. I knew he couldn’t adapt. I kept my right hand glued to my face to take away that left hook. He kept hitting it and hitting it, but he could never get through. About the sixth or seventh round, I knew I had him beat. Once he realized he couldn’t hurt me, the fight was over.” The fight also marked Hopkins’s 14th successful defense of his IBF crown, tying Carlos Monzon’s all-time record for middleweight title defenses. He would make that record his own by defeating Carl Daniels on February 2, 2002. Though Daniels made the fight awkward for Hopkins because he is left-handed, Hopkins was too strong and Daniels could not come out for the 11th round. The fight also marked the first time that the 37-year-old fighter was the marquee name and received a big purse on his own merit—$2.5 million.
After achieving unprecedented success on his own terms, Hopkins had only one remaining foe—Roy Jones. The man who defeated him in 1993 and gave him one of his two losses as a professional still held the undisputed title of light heavyweight champion and carried the unofficial title of best pound-for-pound fighter in boxing. Whatever the eventual outcome of Hopkins’s career, however, he will remain true to himself. As he told Andre D. Williams of The Morning Call, “A true warrior won’t give up, no matter whether they grew up in the suburbs or the ghetto of Philadelphia or the ghetto of Reading. I never gave up. That’s why I’m here. Not by a lot of favors but by a lot of hard work and honesty with myself.”
Sources
Periodicals
Daily News, October 20, 1996.
Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2001.
Sports Illustrated May 15, 2000.
The Morning Call, January 25, 2002.
On-line
BoxingTalk.net, www.boxingtalk.net/pages/HopkinsInterview.htm
—Michael J. Watkins
Hopkins, Bernard
Bernard Hopkins
1965—
Boxer
Bernard Hopkins was one of the great middleweight champions of all time and, for much of his career, the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport of boxing. Nicknamed the "Executioner" for the way he dispatches opponents and for the way he enters the ring before a fight—with an entourage following him clad in black hoods and carrying huge axes—Hopkins overcame a checkered past, which included a lengthy prison stay, to become the first undisputed middleweight champion since Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Hopkins set a middleweight record by making twenty consecutive title defenses without a defeat, a decade-long streak broken by Jermain Taylor in 2005. After losing his title to Taylor, Hopkins did the unexpected, moving up two weight classes and again becoming a champion in the light heavyweight division.
Bernard Hopkins was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 15, 1965. The famous pugilist did not enjoy a tranquil childhood. The son of Bernard and Shirley Hopkins, he grew up in Philadelphia as one of eight children. From an early age Hopkins was an aggressive child and seemed to attract trouble. In 1979 at the age of thirteen he was stabbed on the subway and suffered a punctured lung. The knife narrowly missed his heart, and he spent six months in the hospital recovering from the attack. As he got older he began to intimidate people. Stealing chains, clothing, and money landed him in front of a judge on many occasions. While his high school classmates were graduating, Hopkins was graduating from reform school to the penitentiary. At the age of seventeen Hopkins was convicted of nine felony charges related to an armed robbery and was sentenced to an eighteen-year term in Graterford State Penitentiary. Hopkins told Boxingtalk.com, in a feature that was later reprinted in A Year at the Fights, about his time in lockup: "I saw a lot of things in prison that aren't clean or nice to talk about. I was seventeen years old. I didn't consider myself dangerous, but I was surrounded by killers, rapists, child molesters, skinheads, Mafia types, so I was in a dangerous situation. I saw a guy stabbed to death with a makeshift ice pick in an argument over a pack of cigarettes."
Despite the hardships of life behind bars, Hopkins was grateful for his prison experience, because he woke up from his life of petty theft. After almost five years behind bars, the twenty-two-year-old was released, having earned a GED and having learned some hard lessons. Hopkins went back to his old Philadelphia neighborhood with nine years of parole hanging over his head, but he also had a resolve to make something of his life despite the odds against him. He decided his avenue to success would be through boxing.
Persevered through Early Losses to Win IBF Title
Hopkins started fighting four-round preliminary bouts while working as a cook. In 1988 he lost his first professional fight as the result of mismanagement and weak preparation. Hopkins, a natural middleweight, had been stuffed with fast food to move up to the light heavyweight division. Unaccustomed to the extra pounds, he was sluggish and lost to Clinton Mitchell, a middling opponent. After the loss and the poor treatment by his manager, Hopkins was so discouraged with boxing that he did not fight again for almost a year and a half. When he returned to the ring, he had a new manager, Bouie Fisher, and a new focus on conditioning. Hopkins won twenty-two straight fights, earning a shot at the International Boxing Federation (IBF) middleweight title against Roy Jones Jr. in 1993. The fight should have been his first big payday, but Hopkins maintained he was only paid $70,000 for a championship bout, while his promoter, Butch Lewis, received a $700,000 fight fee. Hopkins lost the fight by a unanimous decision, and a career that had been on the rise since 1989 seemed to stall.
In 1994 the IBF middleweight title was vacant again. It took two tries battling top contender Segundo Mercado (their first fight ended in a draw), but Hopkins finally captured the championship belt in April of 1995. Even though he was now a champion, his career did not immediately take off. He was criticized for refusing a second fight with Jones in October of 1996. The issue for Hopkins was not a fear of Jones, but the fact that he felt promoter Butch Lewis was taking advantage of him. The Los Angeles Daily News called his situation "pitiable," because he had turned down the Jones fight even though he was still at the age of thirty working part time in an auto-repair shop to make ends meet. Hopkins explained the situation to Jay Searcy in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "I'll be a grease monkey the rest of my life before I let anybody screw me again. [Lewis] has been underpaying me since I started. I'm not ducking Jones. I've never ducked anybody."
Despite the legal wrangling, Hopkins continued to fight and defend his title, cruising through the middleweight division. But because of his stand against promoters and managers, and perhaps because of the lack of quality in the middleweight division, a million-dollar payday evaded the champion. The only setback to his boxing record during this time came during a 1998 bout with Robert Allen. In that fight celebrated referee and television judge Mills Lane was trying to separate the two fighters early in the match, and he caught Hopkins at an awkward angle, effectively pushing the champ out of the ring. Hopkins injured his ankle in the fall, and was unable to continue. The fight was declared a "no contest," and Hopkins would go after Allen with a vengeance the next time they met, knocking him down twice on his way to a seven-round technical knockout.
In 1999 Hopkins was one of the few active fighters to testify before a New York City task force set up to investigate the relationship between boxers and promoters. Hopkins said that several promoters told him not to appear before the panel, but he told Franz Lidz in Sports Illustrated: "Prizefighters get mistreated, exploited, out-and-out robbed every day. Either you crusade for reform or you become part of the problem. As a champion, I feel an obligation to take a stand."
At a Glance …
Born on January 15, 1965, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Bernard and Shirley Hopkins; married Jeanette; children: Latrice. Education: General Equivalency Degree.
Career: Professional boxer. Lost first professional bout to Clinton Mitchell, 1988; won 22 consecutive fights, 1988-93; lost first title bout to Roy Jones, 1993; captured vacant International Boxing Federation (IBF) middleweight title, defeating Segundo Mercado, 1995; captured World Boxing Council (WBC) middleweight title, defeating Keith Holmes, 2001; captured World Boxing Association (WBA) middleweight title, defeating Felix Trinidad, 2001; broke Carlos Monzon's record of 15 straight middleweight title defenses, defeating Carl Daniels, 2002; extended record to 20 defenses prior to losing to Jermain Taylor, 2005; captured The Ring magazine's light heavyweight title, defeating Antonio Tarver, 2006; lost title to Joe Cazalghe, 2008.
Awards: Edward J. Neil Trophy, Boxing Writers Association of America, 2001; The Ring magazine Fighter of the Year, 2001; World Boxing Council Boxer of the Year, 2002; ESPY Awards Boxer of the Year, 2005.
Addresses: Home—Philadelphia, PA. Office—c/o Golden Boy Promotions, 626 Wiltshire Boulevard, Suite 350, Los Angeles, CA 90017.
Hopkins was both self-managed and self-promoted and perhaps that explains why, after eleven title defenses, he earned $450,000 for his 2000 bout with Syd Vanderpool.
United Middleweight Titles against Felix Trinidad
When the undefeated Felix Trinidad moved up to the middleweight division, promoter Don King devised a tournament among all the middleweight champions that was designed to pave the way for Trinidad to dominate the division as he had the welterweight division. Hopkins met World Boxing Council champ Keith Holmes, and Trinidad took on World Boxing Association champ William Joppy. Trinidad beat Joppy and Hopkins defeated Holmes in a twelfth-round decision. The fight between Hopkins and Trinidad was set for September 15, 2001, and the winner would unify the middleweight title for the first time since the mid-1980s. A victory by Hopkins would also tie legendary Argentine Carlos Monzon's record of fourteen middleweight title defenses. The whole series of bouts was designed to legitimize Trinidad as a middleweight and then give him a shot at the best fighter in boxing—Roy Jones.
In the usual hype leading up to a major prizefight, Hopkins became known for his Mike Tysonesque ravings. He twice stepped on the Puerto Rican flag to insult Trinidad—who is Puerto Rican—and his fans. The second time, he stepped on the flag while actually in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and provoked a riot. Even when the fight was postponed for two weeks after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Hopkins had the poor taste to wear a baseball cap with the word "WAR" printed on it, and to compare Trinidad and his fans to terrorists. At one point his antics almost caused a relocation of the fight from Madison Square Garden in New York City, a venue not far from ground zero, because officials were so offended by his insensitivity. By the eve of the fight, though, both fighters were expressing their solidarity with New Yorkers, and Hopkins had apologized. Hopkins was paid $100,000 by an online casino to wear the name of its Web site on his back in the form of a temporary tattoo, and he took the entire sum and bet it on himself at 5-2 odds. Few others bet on the thirty-six-year-old fighter against the twenty-eight-year-old undefeated Trinidad. The prestige of both fighters was reflected in their purses. Trinidad received $8 million while the long-time champion Hopkins was paid $2.8 million. But a funny thing happened on the way to Trinidad's coronation—Hopkins won.
Because of Hopkins's inflammatory statements before the fight, the strongly pro-Trinidad crowd booed lustily every time Hopkins's face appeared on the overhead monitors at Madison Square Garden. But Hopkins was such an underdog that by the tenth round, when he had Trinidad on the ropes, the crowd was chanting his name. After the fight even Trinidad called him a great champion and a good fighter. Hopkins told Steve Stringer in the Los Angeles Times that he had a sure-fire strategy coming into the fight: "De La Hoya gave me a little game plan on how to beat Trinidad. He was so confident because he didn't know I was going to be that elusive. Trinidad only has one style of fighting. I knew he couldn't adapt. I kept my right hand glued to my face to take away that left hook. He kept hitting it and hitting it, but he could never get through. About the sixth or seventh round, I knew I had him beat. Once he realized he couldn't hurt me, the fight was over."
Dominated the Middleweight Division
Hopkins would go on to break Carlos Monzon's all-time record for middleweight title defenses by defeating Carl Daniels on February 2, 2002. Though southpaw Daniels made the fight awkward for Hopkins, the undisputed middleweight champion was too strong, and Daniels could not come out for the eleventh round. The fight also marked the first time that the thirty-seven-year-old fighter was the marquee name and received a big purse on his drawing power—$2.5 million.
Hopkins's biggest payday would come in 2004 against Oscar De La Hoya, who was then one of boxing's biggest draws. The fight with De La Hoya was supposed to be a classic confrontation between a speedy, mobile, technical boxer and an overpowering brawler. De La Hoya, however, forgot which role he was supposed to play. The former lightweight and welter-weight champion stood in the middle of the ring slugging away against the bigger, stronger Hopkins. Hopkins stopped De La Hoya with a brutal left hook to the liver in the ninth round. Although Hopkins held the division's three major titles, De La Hoya's share of the purse—reported to be as high as $30 million—dwarfed Hopkins's share. Nonetheless, Hopkins was guaranteed $10 million for the fight, and he may have made as much as $15 million when the pay-per-view receipts were counted.
After De La Hoya, Hopkins would enjoy one more title defense—his twentieth consecutive defense of the IBF title—before losing it all against Jermain Taylor. The first confrontation between the two fighters resulted in a split decision in Taylor's favor. Taylor set the pace in the early rounds, and Hopkins dominated the second half of the fight. After the loss Hopkins was irate. "When I fought Roy Jones in '93, I knew I lost," he told Phil Taylor in Sports Illustrated. "Tonight I won, but they just gave it to the other guy." Many in the press and public agreed with the dethroned champ, and clamored for an immediate rematch. The second fight, however, was quite nearly a replay of their first meeting, "the watering of last year's crop," in the words of HBO analyst Bert Sugar. Although Hopkins was more active than he'd been in the first fight, Taylor successfully out-pointed him, this time winning a unanimous decision.
Won the Light Heavyweight Title
The second loss to Taylor in 2005 found Hopkins at a career crossroads. He's had one of the most successful runs of any middleweight champion, ever, but that run had concluded and he was now forty years old. He had promised his mother, who died in 2003, that he would not continue fighting past that age, but he was still contractually obligated to have one more fight.
It was assumed that Hopkins's final bout would be more of a retirement ceremony than an actual fight, a match against a journeyman virtually guaranteed to send him into retirement on a winning note. Hopkins, however, had other ideas. He idolized the great middleweight champion Sugar Ray Robinson, whose biggest regret had been his failure to capture the light heavyweight crown. For Hopkins, who had started his professional career by losing as a light heavyweight, the allure of trying to surpass his hero in this aspect was irresistible. Rather than ending his career with a cakewalk against a non-contender, Hopkins would challenge the light heavyweight champion, Antonio Tarver, to a real fight in 2006.
Tarver was a prohibitive favorite against Hopkins, and went so far as to bet $250,000—payable to a charity of Hopkins's choice—that the former middleweight champ would not make it past the fifth round. But the Executioner had a few surprises in store for Tarver, staggering him in the fifth round with a powerful right hand and winning the unanimous decision by a wide margin. "I'm proud that I got a chance to go out on top," Hopkins was quoted as saying by Ralph Eligon in the New York Times; reiterating his intention to retire, Hopkins asked, "How many fighters go out on top?"
Hopkins was prepared for retirement—years earlier he had formed a partnership with De La Hoya on a fight promotion company to keep him busy in his post-retirement life. Like so many boxing champions before him, however, it wasn't long before the lure of the ring drew him out of retirement. He successfully defended his title against Ronald "Winky" Wright, in a showcase that featured a brawl between the two fighters' entourages during the pre-fight weigh-in, as well as some heavy action inside the ring. The Executioner started off strong in his next defense, against Welsh super middleweight champion Joe Cazalghe, but he tired visibly in the later rounds, claiming phantom low blows in an attempt to catch his breath. As with Taylor previously, Hopkins bitterly disputed Cazalghe's split-decision victory. This time, there were very few observers who shared his point of view.
At the age forty-three Hopkins announced his intention to continue fighting, despite the setback with Cazalghe. Whenever he does finally retire, his admission to the boxing Hall of Fame is virtually guaranteed, capping a long journey for a man who as a teenager almost lost his life to crime and prison.
Sources
Books
Hauser, Thomas, A Year at the Fights, University of Arkansas Press, 2003.
Periodicals
Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2001.
Morning Call, January 25, 2002.
New York Times, December 4, 2005; June 12, 2006.
Philadelphia Daily News, October 20, 1996.
Sports Illustrated, May 15, 2000; September 19, 2004; November 29, 2004; July 25, 2005; December 12, 2005.
Online
"Bernard Hopkins: Fighter Bio," HBO Boxing, July 30, 2008, http://www.hbo.com/boxing/fighters/hopkins_bernard/bio.html (accessed August 1, 2008).
Raskin, Eric, "A ‘Marvelous’ Time for Hopkins to Say Goodbye?" ESPN.com, April 21, 2008, http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/columns/story?columnist=raskin_eric&id=3355783 (accessed August 1, 2008).
Sugar, Bert, "Taylor-Hopkins 2 Post-Fight Analysis," HBO Boxing, December 11, 2006, http://www.hbo.com/boxing/events/2005/1203_taylor_hopkins2/columns/index.html (accessed August 1, 2008).
—Michael J. Watkins and Derek Jacques