By Patrick Kehoe

Don’t let Bernard Hopkins’ penchant for contradiction or philosophical peripeteia force you to lose your way. His time on this earth and a million situations overcome and endured and “The Executioner” remains the same old rugged survivalist, the same old cold warrior, calling forth his ultimate destiny to bring all before him to submission. Hopkins defiantly remains a solitary man, hardened to the rituals of task, purposeful in his self-caricaturizing busyness (eternally fit) and idealistic glorifications (himself as The American Dream), respected though seldom loved, ever cutting away the fleshy matter of trivializing excess.

For his latest sojourn to fight WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal – this time deep into the motherland of the Quebecois, Quebec City – he’s already insulted his hosts noting that “Canada” is much the same as “northern New York.” With that remark, the politics of the ‘Two Solitudes’ reconstitute the jaws of life snapping around him; though, Hopkins, of course, remains indifferent, indefatigable and poignantly aligned to what he thinks of as merely one more page in the saga of his personal history. 

Mouthing his many mantras, Hopkins loves his own enraptures. He’s accidentally comical in forcing feeding us the epic of his life from street hood to black knight to promotional suit; the epitaph of his rebirth at Golden Boy Promotions making for a signature play of mixed metaphors: The Ultimate Outsider aka Mr. Defiant becomes Mr. Insider, rubbing shoulders with De La Hoya, Inc. Few in boxing bother to speculate on what precisely Hopkins actually brings to the promotional business of Golden Boy, other than as a ‘star attraction’ contract worker. Business acumen? Political savvy? Diplomatic contact person? The mind reels!

For the short term, Hopkins remains a championship boxer of note, sporting a title belt or not. And the former middleweight championship legend from Philadelphia has been honing his gamesmanship for decades now; he’s as much a historical figure in boxing as a championship contender on the brink. Time itself seems to collapse into the black hole of his insatiable yearning for self-definition. Retirement is for wimps and the Jermain Taylor’s of this world. Taking apart novice champions such as Kelly Pavlik assuaged the wounds inflicted so emphatically by Jermain Taylor. Drubbing veteran boxing pound for pound ‘King-defiled’ Roy Jones Jr. mitigated the embarrassment Hopkins suffered in having been taught a boxing lesson by Welsh wizard Joe Calzaghe. Hopkins’ endless return to the ring and thus the scene of his mastery over time’s dictation for the aged, spurs his enthusiasm for regeneration, his need for topping up the sum total of his calculated legacy.

History does tend to motivate the mighty. After all, that’s precisely how legendary egoists think.  And clearly Hopkins believes that a person stands on the ‘right’ side of history, when you are the one handing out the dictations and the beatings. Handing out a beating to 28 year-old Jean Pascal, in front of his frothing fans in Quebec City... well, Hopkins lives for such opportunities. Yes, we are speaking literally here. What else could still motivate the almost 46 year-old to brave, yet again, the rigors of combat and the general hostility of boxing’s foreign stopover championship circuit? For B-Hop money always comes tired first, money and the carnal satisfaction of gorging and demoralizing anyone presumptuous enough to think himself his equal, let alone his master.

Jean Pascal has taken pains to refer to Hopkins as “the teacher” and the “master boxer” throughout the ordeal that all prefight run ups with Hopkins inevitably become. All the pressure squarely rests with Pascal, Hopkins notes. With such a record of greatness, Hopkins has everything on his side and everything to defend, so of course, Pascal feels all the pressure resides in Hopkins’ corner. For this particular contest of light heavyweight elites, it doesn’t really matter and no one cares. The end will justify the means, as has always been the case when Bernard Hopkins involves himself in a battle royale.

Still, Hopkins makes all of his fights a thought-experiment designed to be nightmares projected directly into the brain’s amygdala of the guy who’s pitted themselves body and mind against him. Not that the Hopkins Fear-Factor is what it once was. Basic research tells us the Hopkins armoury contains no weapon upgrades; the stylistics of the man all too familiar and pattern recognition long ago set in stone his essential anti-boxing genius. And yet his technical applications designed to delay, defuse and frustrate has been re-booted since the Calzaghe fight. Hopkins can still confound many top offensive fighters with bravado, defensive reflexivity and countering hitting opportunism.

Team Pascal have been diligently working in Florida on the obvious Hopkins antidote: speed aligned to combination punching. Applied speed does tend to deconstruct Hopkins’ high brow, low yield counter insurgent craftiness. Hopkins takes away angles and space; Pascal will attempt to take away time and patterns from the man who would be king.

The work has already been done; both training camps complete. Hopkins never uses training camp to ‘get in shape’ but only to sharpen the necessary implements he and Nassim Richardson identify as primary. Not that the overall Hopkins game plan changes much; one size tends to fit all/give fits to all. You make more and more money – after the prime years have been spent adoring the primacy of one’s merit – with the art of the con platforming what’s real and vital and uniquely valuable, even if things are not exactly as they seem. One can only wonder if Hopkins the great master of prizefightings technical methods and metrics can still perform on demand, with force and fluidity and guile.    

To Hopkins Pascal is just another body with a title belt, a moderately ‘name’ opponent to be typed in somewhere near the end of his CV. The Haitian, living in snowy Laval, Quebec, doesn’t exactly strike Hopkins as a guy in his league.  Youth and some decent punching speed just about sums up what Hopkins has been admitting are Pascal’s assets, plus the ‘home’ crowd. What does Pascal bring to their WBC/IBO light heavyweight title encounter that Hopkins hasn’t encountered during his 57 professional outings? To that query, Hopkins merely smirks.

Most boxing insiders rate Hopkins as the most proficient practitioner of prizefighting’s dirty little secrets, the almost foul. Hopkins has taken giving offense to a level only James Toney and Floyd Mayweather in this generation have dared to reach toward. And yet he addictively craves respect, expecting everyone to celebrate the fact he’s survived well past his athletic due date. Referring to travelling to Canada as “not really like going to a foreign country” reminds us B-Hop hasn’t exactly been a world traveller throughout his career, let alone sensitive to the realities beyond his own necessity, consumption or exploitation.

Take him or leave him, applaud him and laud him, the man keeps to the proven methods and manners that have made him himself, an island fortress, defensible on all sides.  One gets the sense that B-Hop hasn’t changed, just evolved. And even if we who have chronicled him for so long understand his hunger to be cherished, he’s completely lost among the emotional fineries which constitute adoration. He just gets the job done, one way or another, proud to wear the black rose; thus, he’s taken to the recourse of ‘making history.’ Hopkins’ growing fixation with “leaving a legacy” being the most declarative signage marking his impending old age. The athletic body remains captive to his endless regiments and yet there must be a final accounting of what he’s done; his ring productions more than money, Ring covers and titles belts placed on his mantle in Delaware.

That’s now the secret spur to his eternal youth and the striving for survival and success; history the storehouse for his entire career’s energy and what remains in becoming. No wonder Hopkins takes guarded umbrage to being asked about aging gracefully or being nearer a glorious end than still in mid stream. And yet, Hopkins cannot stop himself from falling into retrospective anecdotes, revamping his few ring defeats and shamelessly denying his role in any miscalculation or mischief. Like boxing’s combat of wills, Hopkins seems drawn to historic rendering, referring to himself as often in the past tense as the present. Though, he never loses sight of his primary, in the moment, objective, for now Jean Pascal. Yet, Jermain Taylor didn’t actually win by defeating him twice, by decision, in the ring. Taylor’s train wreck post-Hopkins record cited by Hopkins as all the proof anyone would need.

Thus spake Bernard!

Be warned Jean Pascal, you aren’t really going to win, even with a successful defence of your light heavyweight championship. Because you have already lost the war of memorialising and you are not likely the custodian of plausible meaning during The Hopkins Era.

Part of the long march that Bernard Hopkins has been on has been to control the outcomes, real or recorded. His own biological imperative and psychological ordering is all about endurance and resistence until death. Such prolonged persistence – his slaying of the expectations to fail he’s felt surround him – long ago became a badge of honour, his ultimate statement on victory. Never a complete victim, he’s always reminded us and himself. The record is there for interpretation, even during its formulation. Why not control the story, the end game of narrative?

No doubt, being the last man standing from his generation fills him with more than one sense of mission. And Hopkins longs to go on telling his tale of bravery and tenacity, no matter the abyss.

We know, that the boxing ring never forgives; the chaos within assigning temporary glory and permanent affliction. So, even those most learned in the laws of survival need to understand that a fighter’s essential existence is solitary, brutish and short. And nothing can make an alteration to that decreed inevitability.

Patrick Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net