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D-Hop Still Fighting Way Out of Uncle Bernard's Shadow

Four years after an unsuccessful title shot against Holt (left), Demetrius craves another shot. His uncle can help set the table, but D-Hop needs to get cookin' to secure the opportunity. (Hogan)
It is one of those perplexing questions that does not have one absolutely correct answer. Does being the relative of a famous person help or hinder one’s individual development? Is it better to bask in another’s reflected glory, or to try to make your own mark in the world?
For comebacking junior middleweight Demetrius “The Gladiator” Hopkins, his response to the complexities posed by his special but hardly unique circumstances has been to sample bits from both Column A and Column B. For the moment, he again has cast his lot with his Hall of Fame-bound uncle, Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins, whose tough-love approach to his nephew’s boxing career has occasionally been the source of friction between the two.
“I’m OK with Bernard,” Demetrius said. “I respect and appreciate what he’s accomplished, and what he’s trying to do to get me back into a position where I can fight for a world championship. I’m a Hopkins; nothing can change that. I’m proud to be a Hopkins. But I’m older, and I’ve learned from some of the things that have happened in the past. It’s time for me to really establish my own identity as a fighter, my own legacy.”
The younger Hopkins, who once was the IBF’s second-ranked junior welterweight contender, is now 32 and again bidding to regain a measure of relevance at a higher weight, albeit with somewhat lowered expectations. D-Hop (31-2-1, 11 KOs) takes on 36-year-old journeyman Keenan Collins (14-7-3, 9 KOs), of York, Pa., in a non-televised eight-rounder Saturday night in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, on the undercard of an HBO World Championship Boxing doubleheader headlined by the matchup of WBC lightweight champion Antonio DeMarco (28-2-1, 21 KOs) and Adrien Broner (24-0, 20 KOs). The co-feature pits heavyweights Seth Mitchell (24-0, 20 KOs) and Johnathon Banks (28-1-1, 18 KOs) for Mitchell’s NABO title as well as the vacant WBC International belt.
The card is being staged by D-Hop’s once and perhaps future promotional company, Golden Boy, in conjunction with R&R Promotions and Gary Shaw Productions. And if you think that Bernard Hopkins’ position as a Golden Boy executive is mostly responsible for Demetrius getting what is tantamount to another tryout for a regular gig with GBP, you’d be correct.
“There’s a lot of people that gave me second chances,” Bernard said of Demetrius’ second bid to become part of the Golden Boy stable, the first being sandwiched between stints with Duva Boxing and Main Events. “There are people that gave me third, fourth and fifth chances. You can’t walk around with the cancer of bitterness.
“Boxing is open to redemption and forgiveness. Haven’t I preached that? Haven’t I lived that? I got Demetrius on board after five years of not being under Golden Boy’s banner, although he’s not there yet.”
Demetrius’ former manager, Cameron Dunkin, said he believes D-Hop – who lost a split decision to then-WBO junior welterweight champ Kendall Holt on Dec. 13, 2008, in what has been his only shot to date at a world title – has retained enough of his skills to mount another bid at serious contention. But much depends, Dunkin said, on whether Demetrius exhibits the sort of personal and professional discipline for which is uncle in renowned, and which the nephew has too often lacked.
“I got Demetrius a pretty big signing bonus (with Top Rank),” Dunkin recalled. “One fight we scheduled for him, when he got there he was, I don’t know, maybe eight or nine pounds overweight. The fight was canceled and we had to pay the opponent something like $12,000. So things started off kind of rough.
“But he still got that title fight with Holt. After that, though, it never really got going again. It wasn’t all Demetrius’ fault; things just never fell into place like we all thought they should have. You have to remember, though, that he took the Holt fight on short notice. He had to drop a lot of weight fast. Who knows? If he had beaten Holt, this might be a completely different conversation.”
Dunkin’s exasperation with Demetrius owed not only to the fighter’s failure to fully capitalize on his obvious talent, but with out-of-the-ring issues, one of which was his 2009 arrest on a warrant for an outstanding debt for child support.
“Let’s face it, if he had gone with Bernard from the beginning, I don’t think he ever would have come to me,” Dunkin said. “He and Bernard weren’t getting along and he needed someone to try to move him and get him fights.
“Being Bernard’s nephew, I think, was a benefit to Demetrius in a lot of ways. It separated him from the pack a little bit. But Demetrius got caught up in it at times. He thought that having the Hopkins name should have helped him more than it did, but that doesn’t get it done. At some point, you have to show you can do it all by yourself.
“Which is not to say he couldn’t have gotten it done then, or can’t get it done now. You see guys who are shot at 25 or 26. Bernard is nearly 50 and he isn’t shot. Boxing is a sport where one size doesn’t fit all. Demetrius is only 32. He has so much ability. I brought him out here (to Las Vegas) to camp and he sparred with one of my middleweights, who’s undefeated now. Demetrius just played with him. People who saw that session almost couldn’t believe how good he was. If he really dedicates himself now, I definitely think he can win a world championship.”
Not that total dedication to their craft is necessarily a family trait shared by both fighting Hopkinses.
“I remember Bozy (D-Hop’s former trainer, Derek “Bozy” Ennis) telling him, `You can say what you want about your uncle, but Bernard takes care of himself. He trains, he’s dedicated, he’s a true professional prizefighter,’” Dunkin said. “Bernard lives like that life 365 days a year. There aren’t a lot of those guys around.”
Bernard Hopkins’ adherence to a strict code of conduct, one he constantly tried to impose upon Demetrius, the son of his older sister, Bernadette, at various times spurred the nephew push himself harder. But it also frequently raised the kid’s hackles.
“I gave Demetrius his first pair of gloves,” Bernard said before his 2005 first bout with Jermain Taylor. “Demetrius would cry all the time. I’d tell Bernadette that he’d always be in trouble if he didn’t stand up to the tough guys who were giving him a hard time. So I took him around the corner to Mr. (Jazz) Jarrett, right in the basement, and put the gloves on him. Within a month, nobody was picking on Demetrius anymore. Within a year, he was putting combinations together and winning these little trophies, and he was hooked.
“It was an accident it happened that way, but, you know, he at least had to learn how to defend himself.”
As he got older, Demetrius sought to assert his independence from Bernard. Upon withdrawing from Temple University in 2000, he signed his first promotional contract with Dino Duva, against Bernard’s advice, and he only temporarily was trained by Bernard’s longtime chief second, Bouie Fisher (now deceased), preferring to return to Ennis. (Demetrius is now trained by Danny Davis.) The two also squabbled about other things, raising an already high tension level.
“There is a lot of pressure,” Demetrius said in June 2003. “People always want to compare me to my uncle. It’s like I can’t ever have a bad day or somebody will say, `You’re not as good as Bernard.’”
Nor were unflattering comparisons of his ring achievements in comparison to Bernard’s the only source of irritation for Demetrius.
“My uncle and me have our differences,” he said in 2008. “It’s not going to work out between me and him. The man kicked me out of my apartment. He kicked me, my son and my fiancée out.
“We don’t get along. It’s been like that for a while. It’s a shame. He’s got to learn how to talk to people and respect people.”
But time and circumstances, if not healing all wounds, at least provide grounds for uneasy truces. Besides, maybe the old saying really is true that blood is thicker than water.
Demetrius admittedly has much ground to make up. He fought just once in 2011, a 10-round, unanimous-decision loss to Brad Solomon, and once this year, an eight-round, unanimous decision over Doel Carrasquillo in Costa Mesa, Calif., with Bernard at ringside. An impressive showing against Collins could serve the purpose of reminding fight fans that he still is out there, and maybe as a potential factor in his new weight class.
“Demetrius understands that he represents not only himself in the ring, but the legacy of the Hopkins family,” Bernard said in 2005, a fact of life that neither man is apparently unable to overlook even if they wanted to.
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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.
It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.
In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.
Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.
It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.
“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”
Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.
Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.
Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.
Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.
We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.
Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”
But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.
“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”
Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.
Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”
If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.
Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”
Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.
Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.
On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.
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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More
It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.
In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.
Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.
CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.
****
Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.
Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”
And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.
Joey Archer
Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer
Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.
Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)
Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.
Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.
In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.
When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.
Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.
May he rest in peace.
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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.
Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.
“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.
Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.
After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.
Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.
One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”
Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.
“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”
Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.
A real fight was happening.
Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.
Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.
In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.
“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”
Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.
In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.
“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”
Espinoza Wins
WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.
“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.
Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.
Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.
It was Espinoza’s third title defense.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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