Bernard Fernandez, B-Hop’s ‘Boswell’, Was Showered With Accolades in June

It’s been a month of accolades for longtime boxing scribe Bernard Fernandez, a regular contributor to these pages. On Sunday, June 12, he was formally inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Last week he learned that he was the recipient of yet another Bernie Award for outstanding writing. Open to members of the Boxing Writers Association of America, the Bernie Award is an annual competition with the winners determined by a panel of judges.

Bernard Fernandez has been a familiar face at IBHOF induction ceremonies. He has covered sixteen of these events. But he was not there for his own induction. His beloved Annie, his wife of nearly 54 years, had taken sick and was too ill to travel. He chose to remain by her side.

The pandemic stole Fernandez’s moment in the sun. He was actually named to the Hall with the class of 2020 but the four-day festival that conjoins the induction ceremony was cancelled that year and again in 2021. Three induction classes were bundled into this year’s event.

Fernandez wasn’t on the stage with the other inductees, but when he was summoned in absentia to the podium it was one of the highlights of the afternoon. Standing in for him were his Philadelphia homeys Bernard Hopkins and BWAA president Joe Santoliquito. They called him at his home in Pennsylvania so that he could hear the roar of the crowd when his name was called. Hopkins was in something of a familiar role. He had presented the symbolic championship belt to Fernandez when Fernandez was inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of fame in 2013.

The two Bernards — Fernandez and fellow 2020 inductee Hopkins – are boxing’s version of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, the former a famous 18^th-century British diarist who chronicled his friend Johnson’s life in a landmark biography. Hopkins had a career that spanned four decades. Fernandez was there for B-Hop’s first fight and for his last fight and for almost all of his fights in-between. In the course of their respective journeys, they became fast friends.

Hopkins made his pro debut on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 1988, losing a four-round decision to fellow novice Clinton Mitchell at Resorts International in Atlantic City. The main event was a 10-rounder between 41-year-old Saoul Mamby and 23-year-old John Wesley Meekins. In his ringside report, Fernandez used the phrase “ancient marvel.” Needless to say, he was referencing Mamby, not Hopkins who would become more of a marvel.

Fernandez could have watched the Mamby-Meekins fight at home on the fledgling ESPN network, but he was there in the building when Hopkins made his inauspicious debut. He was also in the building when Hopkins scored the most spectacular knockout of his glorious career, flattening poor Richard Quiles with a picture-perfect left hook 30 seconds into their scheduled six-rounder at a Philadelphia National Guard armory. Perhaps 500 people were in attendance.

That bout was in 1991. Twenty-five years later, Fernandez covered B-Hop’s farewell fight in Los Angeles for this publication.

Bernie Awards

The Bernie Awards recognize exceptional writing in six categories:  Event Coverage, Column, News Story, Feature Story Over 1,500 Words, Feature Story Under 1,500 Words, and Investigative Reporting. Fernandez achieved a first-place finish for a RingTV story titled “Don King at 90: A Legend Nears the Finish Line.”

Thomas Hauser, a perennial Bernie Award honoree, explored the same subject matter in a story for this publication that ran on Jan. 30. Titled “Don King – 2 Samuel 1:19, 1:25, 1:27 ‘How are the Mighty Fallen,’” it was accorded an “Honorable Mention” in the Event Coverage category. Another TSS story by Hauser, “The Script for Lamar Odom vs. Aaron Carter,” finished third in the category of Investigative Reporting.

The complete list of Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2021 can be found at the BWAA web site: https://www.bwaa.org/single-post/the-bwaa-is-proud-to-announce-its-2021-bernie-award-winners

We here at The Sweet Science congratulate all of the prize winners. The recipients will be formally recognized by their peers at the 94^th renewal of the Boxing Writers annual dinner tentatively set for mid-September at Las Vegas in conjunction with the third fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin.

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