CAST NO SHADOW

ON September 29 2001, 14 days later than originally scheduled, the great Bernard Hopkins produced perhaps his greatest performance of all to convincingly outbox and then stop Felix Trinidad, then 40-0 and considered by many the finest fighter in the world. In beating Keith Holmes and William Joppy, Hopkins and Trinidad had respectively progressed to the final, at Madison Square Garden, of a four-fighter middleweight tournament promoted by Don King with the intention of declaring Trinidad the world’s premier fighter at 160lbs. When New York was devastated by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the twin towers of Manhattan’s World Trade Center, that final was postponed indefinitely, and then rescheduled for the 29th. Trinidad, like New York and the rest of the world, was never the same again.

: Trinidad was undefeated, and had a fanfare and star power much greater than myself. I was an “opponent” – not that I thought that way, but I had to understand what the promotion was going to be like, and became. Even though I was confident, and knew I could win the fight and later the respect, there was a different type of fight [before the fight]. I was the threat, and the wildcard. I knew something about “Tito” – he was one-dimensional, but no one was strong enough and had that endurance to make him do something else. That one-dimensional thinking had got exposed when he fought Oscar De La Hoya – I knew I could expose that. It was all about [being] undisputed – which