Hopkins Looking Ahead, Not at 20-Year Reunion of 1st World Championship

Published

10 years ago

April 28, 2015

HOPKINS LOOKING AHEAD, NOT THINKING ABOUT 20-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF HIS FIRST WORLD TITLE

You might think that the 20th anniversary of the winning of his first world championship would be a cause of celebration for Bernard Hopkins, or at least a reason for fond remembrance.

Such an assumption would be incorrect. For all his accomplishments, Hopkins, 50, is more of a forward-thinker than a looking-past type. He might or might not have one more fight to squeeze out of his career as an active fighter, but in either case he’s prepared for the next phase of a most interesting life, which the reformed ex-con envisions as a color commentator for televised boxing, a celebrity endorser, a more fully involved executive with Golden Boy Promotions or, who knows, maybe the host of a network news/entertainment show.

“I’ve been knowing Michael Strahan for, like, five years,” Hopkins, when contacted for this story, said of his friendship with the two-time-Super Bowl-winning defensive end for the New York Giants who now co-hosts “Michael and Kelly” with Kelly Ripa weekday mornings on ABC-TV. “Michael said, `Bernard, you’re a charming guy. You have personality. We have two things in common: We both like to talk, and we got that gap between our teeth.”

During an hour-long discussion of what was, what is and what is yet to be, the oldest fighter ever to win a widely recognized world title made it clear that his final bout, whether it is against an undetermined opponent sometime this year or his unanimous-decision loss to Sergey Kovalev in their light heavyweight unification showdown last Nov. 8 in Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall, is not the end of Bernard Hopkins. It only marks a new beginning.

“I’m always going to have fighting in me,” Hopkins said. “Physically, this year is important to me. I’m 50. There’s a movement out there that I represent, and that’s the 50-and-up club. If I do take another fight, it has to be meaningful. But, really, how many good fighters would want to run the risk of getting beat up by a 50-year-old man? There aren’t a lot of Sergey Kovalevs out there. I give him a lot of respect for agreeing to fight me. Adonis Stevenson (the WBC light heavyweight champ), he ain’t kicking down no doors to get to me or to Sergey.”

And if no credible opponent signs up for B-Hop’s farewell to the ring wars, after 27 years in the pro ranks?

“Then that’ll be that,” he said. “I’m not going to embarrass myself by begging or pleading to fight anybody.”

For many champions, retirement means taking it easy, maybe eating some of the fattening food that they had to deny themselves to remain in fighting trim, and to become fixtures at card shows and other gatherings where nostalgic fans can gaze upon them and recall just how proficient they once were in the toughest, most demanding sport of all.

Hopkins doesn’t intend to settle into the comfortable if somewhat dissatisfying existence of an official relic. After being a guest presenter at the 90th annual Boxing Writers Association of America Awards Dinner in New York on April 24, and then taking in the Wladimir Klitschko-Bryant Jennings heavyweight title bout in Madison Square Garden the following night, he jetted to Las Vegas the next day to serve as an expert commentator for ESPN’s week-long coverage of the Mayweather-Pacquiao megafight, which comes on the heels of what he hopes was the first of many similar gigs with HBO Sports, having been a part of the broadcast team for the March 14 Kovalev-Jean Pascal fight in Montreal along with Jim Lampley and Max Kellerman. And while he is still learning a few tricks of that trade, like shortening his trademark 10-minute soliloquies, as entertaining as they might be, to more easily digestible 10-second sound bites.

“It takes some getting used to,” Hopkins, Philadelphia’s most notable fighter since the heyday of the late, great Smokin’ Joe Frazier, said of his introduction to vocal brevity. “I can’t dominate the conversation. I admit, I got a problem with that sometimes. But I’m learning you can use a few words to make a point instead of a lot of words. Jim Lampley has been working with me on that, like a mentor. He tells me to get in and get out. Just like in boxing.”

As an interviewee instead of as an interviewer, B-Hop can still go the distance, rattling off lengthy responses to questions about, well, just about anything. For the purposes of this story, the subject was his first world championship victory, in his third shot at a title, when he won the vacant IBF middleweight belt on a seventh-round stoppage of Ecuador’s Segundo Mercado on April 29, 1995, in Landover, Md. But, somewhat oddly, Hopkins’ recollections of that fateful, life-altering encounter were not on the tip of his always-wagging tongue.

“You know, I really haven’t thought about that fight in a long time,” he said. “Not even for one second.”

Perhaps, if you’re the veteran of 28 world title bouts, including 21 during his 10-year reign as a middleweight champion, it’s easy to tuck one such fight into the dustier recesses of memory. Or it just might be that Hopkins has sharper, more vivid recollections of his first two title scrums, which came up short. It nagged him that he had to wait 17 years to get a rematch with Roy Jones Jr., who won a unanimous decision for the vacant IBF middleweight crown on May 22, 1993. That festering wound was finally cleansed when Hopkins outpointed Jones on all the judges’ scorecards in a non-title, light heavyweight matchup on April 3, 2010.

And it is the first scrap with Mercado, a descendant of African slaves, that Hopkins is forever apt to recall, and none too fondly. Again fighting for the vacant IBF middleweight championship, Jones having moved up to super middleweight, Hopkins seemingly was being dealt from a stacked deck, although he was ranked No. 1 by the IBF to No. 2 for Mercado. Not only was he going up against an Ecuadorean in his home country, but the lead promoter for the fight was Don King, who had Mercado, a Quito resident who presumably was accustomed to that city’s thin air at an elevation of 9,252 feet. Hopkins, on the other hand, was brought in just two days before the bout (as he remembers it today) or four days before (the time line described by the Showtime broadcast crew). In either case, that was hardly enough time for Hopkins’ body to adjust to the stark change in altitude.

“Oh, man, that whole trip was something else,” Hopkins said. “There was a war or something going on between Ecuador and Peru. Everywhere you went, there were a lot of soldiers carrying submachine guns.

“After we arrived, I ran into (future WBA super middleweight champion) Frankie Liles and he said, `You just coming in?’ This was Thursday, two days before my fight with Mercado. I said yeah. He told me he and some of the other fighters from America had been there for, like, two weeks, to get adjusted to the altitude.

“I didn’t have nearly enough time to make that adjustment. Let me tell you, it does make a difference. The next day, I went out to run and got lightheaded. I could hardly breathe. Then I went to the gym that had been assigned for me and there was dog and chicken s— all over the place. I turned around and said, `Man, they want me to work out here? You have got to be kidding.’

“Butch Lewis (Hopkins’ promoter at the time) found some local guy, a tour guide or something, and gave him a few dollars to find us a better place. He sent us to a gym even further up the mountain! We’re being driven up there on these winding roads, with no guard rails. I’m looking out the window and you can see over the cliff. Make a bad turn, you drop all the way down and it’d have been all over. I got to the gym alive, shook out a few things, and that was it. I wasn’t about to go back up there again.”

So why did Hopkins arrive in Quito with so little time for get acclimated? He said he has “documentation” that Lewis, from whom he later split, had been given $100,000 by King to delay his departure for Ecuador and thus further enhance Mercado’s chances to become the first professional boxer from his country to win a world championship.

“I keep stuff,” Hopkins said. “They call me a hoarder, but you never know when you might need something.”

What a gasping Hopkins, who was floored in the fifth and seventh rounds, needed was a second wind. Somehow he found it, dominating the closing rounds as it was Mercado who appeared to tire more down the stretch. When it was all over, the IBF title remained vacant, Hopkins coming out ahead, 114-111, on Al DeVito’s card while Colombia’s Francisco Hernandez had Mercado winning by 116-114. That left matters up to the swing judge, Paul Gibbs, who submitted a scorecard all even at 113-113.

The IBF-mandated rematch took place just 133 days later, at sea level and on American soil. The atmospheric change and a supportive audience must have energized Hopkins, who brutalized Mercado from the opening bell until referee Rudy Battle stepped in to wave a halt to the one-sided proceedings with 1 minute, 10 seconds remaining in the seventh round.

“If he couldn’t beat me in Ecuador, he damn sure wasn’t about to beat me in the States,” Hopkins said. “I think Don King knew that. It was my fight to lose at that point, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

As for Mercado, the thrashing he received in Landover – Hopkins still was “The Executioner” then, 20 of his 27 victories coming inside the distance, including 12 in the first round – ruined him. He was 1-7-1 thereafter until his retirement in 2003, with six of the losses by knockout.

I asked Hopkins what might have happened had Mercado gotten the nod in their first fight, or if he had fought a Mexican for a WBC belt in Mexico or Las Vegas instead of an Ecuadorean for an IBF belt in Ecuador. Boxing politics being what they are, it is not unreasonable to presume that he would have had to wait longer, perhaps even a great deal longer, to get another shot at a world championship. Maybe he would never have gotten that opportunity to become what he became.

“That makes a lot of sense, based on history,” he said. “It’s happened before, plenty of times. It does give you something to think about. It probably would have put me on a different path. But there’s no sense in wondering about what might have happened. My thing is to look ahead more than to look back, whether I ever throw another punch or not.”

As champion, Hopkins reinvented himself. With an eye toward the longevity he was to achieve, he honed the hit-and-don’t-get-hit style that has enabled him to remain at or near the top longer than any elite fighter, and that includes Archie Moore and George Foreman. He makes no apologies for the makeover that some have labeled as exciting as watching paint dry.

“Yeah, I heard how I was boring, how I was a technician,” Hopkins said. “Some of it hurt. Fighters believe that the only way to be a superstar is to be `TV-friendly’ or `fan-friendly.’ If you’re hitting and not getting hit back much, you’re perceived as not being marketable. But I came to realize I had great defense and great reflexes. I could make a guy miss and make him pay. The thing is, you can do all that and still look pretty good doing it, and against real fighters.

“Why should you take punches to prove you can take a punch? That’s ridiculous. It’s worse than ridiculous. It’s stupid.”

So the onetime “Executioner,” more recently re-labeled as “The Alien,” is morphing into “The Elocutioner.” His diction might not be velvety smooth or his grammar always perfect, but he doesn’t slur his words or demonstrate any signs of a damaged brain. Those are the foremost prerequisites for someone who is eager to continue making a good living by talking. Hopkins’ late mother, Shirley, once thought her son’s chattiness might lead him to become a preacher or a politician, and B-Hop said his first dream was to become a disc jockey on the radio.

He found boxing instead.

“I’m in a good place,” Hopkins continued. “My money’s fine, my family’s fine. People say,`Why don’t you just rest? Take it easy?’ I can’t. I won’t. To me, everything is a competition. It shouldn’t be, but it is. That’s just the way I am.”

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Bernard Fernandez

Steven Navarro is the TSS 2024 Prospect of the Year

Published

37 mins ago

December 18, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Steven-Navarro-is-the-TSS-2024-Prospect-of-the-Year

“I get ‘Bam’ vibes when I watch this kid,” said ESPN ringside commentator Tim Bradley during the opening round of Steven Navarro’s most recent match. Bradley was referencing WBC super flyweight champion Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, a precociously brilliant technician whose name now appears on most pound-for-pound lists.

There are some common threads between Steven Navarro, the latest fighter to adopt the nickname “Kid Dynamite,” and Bam Rodriguez. Both are southpaws currently competing in the junior bantamweight division. But, of course, Bradley was alluding to something more when he made the comparison. And Navarro’s showing bore witness that Bradley was on to something.

It was the fifth pro fight for Navarro who was matched against a Puerto Rican with a 7-1 ledger. He ended the contest in the second frame, scoring three knockdowns, each the result of a different combination of punches, forcing the referee to stop it. It was the fourth win inside the distance for the 20-year-old phenom.

Isaias Estevan “Steven” Navarro turned pro after coming up short in last December’s U.S. Olympic Trials in Lafayette, Louisiana. The #1 seed in the 57 kg (featherweight) division, he was upset in the finals, losing a controversial split decision. Heading in, Navarro had won 13 national tournaments beginning at age 12.

A graduate of LA’s historic Fairfax High School, Steven made his pro debut this past April on a Matchroom Promotions card at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas and then inked a long-term deal with Top Rank. He comes from a boxing family. His father Refugio had 10 pro fights and three of Refugio’s cousins were boxers, most notably Jose Navarro who represented the USA at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and was a four-time world title challenger as a super flyweight. Jose was managed by Oscar De La Hoya for much of his pro career.

Nowadays, the line between a prospect and a rising contender has been blurred. Three years ago, in an effort to make matters less muddled, we operationally defined a prospect thusly: “A boxer with no more than a dozen fights, none yet of the 10-round variety.” To our way of thinking, a prospect by nature is still in the preliminary-bout phase of his career.

We may loosen these parameters in the future. For one thing, it eliminates a lot of talented female boxers who, like their Japanese male counterparts in the smallest weight classes, are often pushed into title fights when, from a historical perspective, they are just getting started.

But for the time being, we will adhere to our operational definition. And within the window that we have created, Steven Navarro stood out. In his first year as a pro, “Kid Dynamite” left us yearning to see more of him.

Honorable mention: Australian heavyweight Teremoana Junior (5-0, 5 KOs)

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The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

9 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Thomas Hauser

There have been countless dramatizations of Muhammad Ali’s life and more will follow in the years ahead. The most heavily marketed of these so far have been the 1977 movie titled The Greatest starring Ali himself and the 2001 biopic Ali starring Will Smith.

The Greatest was fictionalized. Its saving grace apart from Ali’s presence on screen was the song “The Greatest Love of All” which was written for the film and later popularized by Whitney Houston. Beyond that, the movie was mediocre. “Of all our sports heroes,” Frank Deford wrote, “Ali needs least to be sanitized. But The Greatest is just a big vapid valentine. It took a dive.”

The 2001 film was equally bland but without the saving grace of Ali on camera. “I hated that film,” Spike Lee said. “It wasn’t Ali.” Jerry Izenberg was in accord, complaining, “Will Smith playing Ali was an impersonation, not a performance.”

The latest entry in the Ali registry is a play running this week off-Broadway at the AMT Theater (354 West 45th Street) in Manhattan.

The One: The Life of Muhammad Ali was written by David Serero, who has produced and directed the show in addition to playing the role of Angelo Dundee in the three-man drama. Serero, age 43, was born in Paris, is of Moroccan-French-Jewish heritage, and has excelled professionally as an opera singer (baritone) and actor (stage and screen).

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The play is flawed. There are glaring factual inaccuracies in the script that add nothing to the dramatic arc and detract from its credibility.

On the plus side; Zack Bazile (pictured) is exceptionally good as Ali. And Serero (wearing his director’s hat) brings the most out of him.

Growing up, Bazile (now 28) excelled in multiple sports. In 2018, while attending Ohio State, he won the NCAA Long Jump Championship and was named Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year. He also dabbled in boxing, competed in two amateur fights in 2022, and won both by knockout. He began acting three years ago.

Serero received roughly one thousand resumes when he published notices for a casting call in search of an actor to play Ali. One-hundred-twenty respondents were invited to audition.

“I had people who looked like Ali and were accomplished actors,” Serero recalls. “But when they were in the room, I didn’t feel Ali in front of me. You have to remember; we’re dealing with someone who really existed and there’s video of him, so it’s not like asking someone to play George Washington.”

And Ali was Ali. That’s a hard act to follow.

Bazile is a near-perfect fit. At 6-feet-2-inches tall, 195 pounds, he conveys Ali’s physicality. His body is sculpted in the manner of the young Ali. He moves like an athlete because he is an athlete. His face resembles Ali’s and his expressions are very much on the mark in the way he transmits emotion to the audience. He uses his voice the way Ali did. He moves his eyes the way Ali did. He has THE LOOK.

Zack was born the year that Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, so he has no first-hand memory of the young Ali who set the world ablaze. “But as an actor,” he says, “I’m representing Ali. That’s a responsibility I take very seriously. Everyone has an essence about them. I had to find the right balance – not too over the top – and capture that.”

Sitting in the audience watching Bazile, I felt at times as though it was Ali onstage in front of me. Zack has the pre-exile Ali down perfectly. The magic dissipates a bit as the stage Ali grows older. Bazile still has to add the weight of aging to his craft. But I couldn’t help but think, “Muhammad would have loved watching Zack play him.”

****

Twenty-four hours after the premiere of The One, David Serero left the stage for a night to shine brightly in a real boxing ring., The occasion was the tenth fight card that Larry Goldberg has promoted at Sony Hall in New York, a run that began with Goldberg’s first pro show ever on October 13, 2022.

Most of the fights on the six-bout card played out as expected. But two were tougher for the favorites than anticipated. Jacob Riley Solis was held to a draw by Daniel Jefferson. And Andy Dominguez was knocked down hard by Angel Meza in round three before rallying to claim a one-point split-decision triumph.

Serero sang the national anthem between the second and third fights and stilled the crowd with a virtuoso performance. Fans at sports events are usually restless during the singing of the anthem. This time, the crowd was captivated. Serero turned a flat ritual into an inspirational moment. People were turning to each other and saying “Wow!”

****

The unexpected happened in Tijuana last Saturday night when 25-to-1 underdog Bruno Surace climbed off the canvas after a second-round knockdown to score a shocking, one-punch, sixth-round stoppage of Jaime Munguia. There has been a lot of commentary since then about what happened that night. The best explanation I’ve heard came from a fan named John who wrote, “The fight was not over in the second round although Munguia thought it was because, if he caught him once, he would naturally catch him again. Plus he looked at this little four KO guy [Surace had scored 4 knockouts in 27 fights] the way all the fans did, like he had no punch. That is what a fan can afford to do. But a fighter should know better. The ref reminds you, ‘Protect yourself at all times.’ Somebody forgot that.”

photo (c) David Serero

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

Published

2 days ago

December 16, 2024

Arne K. Lang

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

If asked to name a prominent boxing trainer who operates out of a gym in Los Angeles, the name Freddie Roach would jump immediately to mind. Best known for his work with Manny Pacquaio, Roach has been named the Trainer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America a record seven times.

A mere seven miles from Roach’s iconic Wild Card Gym is the gym that Rudy Hernandez now calls home. Situated in the Little Tokyo neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, the L.A. Boxing Gym – a relatively new addition to the SoCal boxing landscape — is as nondescript as its name. From the outside, one would not guess that two reigning world champions, Junto Nakatani and Anthony Olascuaga, were forged there.

As Freddie Roach will be forever linked with Manny Pacquiao, so will Rudy Hernandez be linked with Nakatani. The Japanese boxer was only 15 years old when his parents packed him off to the United States to be tutored by Hernandez. With Hernandez in his corner, the lanky southpaw won titles at 112 and 115 and currently holds the WBO bantamweight (118) belt. In his last start, he knocked out his Thai opponent, a 77-fight veteran who had never been stopped, advancing his record to 29-0 (22 KOs).

Nakatani’s name now appears on several pound-for-pound lists. A match with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue is brewing. When that match comes to fruition, it will be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

“Junto Nakatani is the greatest fighter I’ve ever trained. It’s easy to work with him because even when he came to me at age 15, his focus was only on boxing. It was to be a champion one day and nothing interfered with that dream,” Hernandez told sports journalist Manouk Akopyan writing for Boxing Scene.

Akin to Nakatani, Rudy Hernandez built Anthony Olascuaga from scratch. The LA native was rucked out of obscurity in April of 2023 when Jonathan Gonzalez contracted pneumonia and was forced to withdraw from his date in Tokyo with lineal light flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji. Olascuaga, with only five pro fights under his belt, filled the breach on 10 days’ notice and although he lost (TKO by 9), he earned kudos for his gritty performance against the man recognized as the best fighter in his weight class.

Two fights later, back in Tokyo, Olascuaga copped the WBO world flyweight title with a third-round stoppage of Riku Kano. His first defense came in October, again in Japan, and Olascuaga retained his belt with a first-round stoppage of the aforementioned Gonzalez. (This bout was originally ruled a no-contest as it ended after Gonzalez suffered a cut from an accidental clash of heads. But the referee ruled that Gonzalez was fit to continue before the Puerto Rican said “no mas,” alleging his vision was impaired, and the WBO upheld a protest from the Olascuaga camp and changed the result to a TKO. Regardless, Rudy Hernandez’s fighter would have kept his title.)

Hernandez, 62, is the brother of the late Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez. A two-time world title-holder at 130 pounds who fought the likes of Azumah Nelson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., Chicanito passed away in 2011, a cancer victim at age 45.

Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez was one of the most popular fighters in the Hispanic communities of Southern California. Rudy Hernandez, a late bloomer of sorts – at least in terms of public recognition — has kept his brother’s flame alive with own achievements. He is a worthy honoree for the 2024 Trainer of the Year.

Note: This is the first in our series of annual awards. The others will arrive sporadically over the next two weeks.

Photo credit: Steve Kim

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