BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE EXECUTIONER
BERNARD HOPKINS is unique as a fighter in that he will be remembered more for what he accomplished in the ring when he was old than when he was young. That became clear on July 21, 2007, when at age 42, he defeated Ronald “Winky” Wright at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Boxing fans are familiar with the Hopkins saga. At age 18, he was sentenced to five-to-12 years in prison for multiple street crimes. “I don’t blame the judge,” he said later. “I’d been in court thirty times in two years. What else was he supposed to do?”
For fifty-six months, Hopkins was one of 3,000 inmates in Graterford State Penitentiary in Pennsyvania. When he was released at age 23, he had meager vocational skills and little margin for error. Then he turned to boxing and lost his first pro fight. He sat out the next 16 months, returned to the ring in 1990, and was defeated only once over the next 15 years. That was by Roy Jones in a 1993 IBF middleweight title bout when Bernard didn’t takes the risks he needed to take and was outboxed over 12 rounds. Then Jones went up in weight and, in 1995, Hopkins captured the IBF middleweight crown with a seventh-round knockout of Segundo Mercado. Ultimately, he made 20 consecutive title defenses. When he beat Felix Trinidad in a 2001 title-unification bout at Madison Square Garden, he achieved superstar status.
The Trinidad fight was the first time that Hopkins’s age was weighed against him
