By Lyle Fitzsimmons - Bernard Hopkins and I go way back.
It’s not as if we’re Facebook friends or anything – and I notice that I have yet to be invited to swim laps with him as he goes through his pool-centric fight-prep routine in Philadelphia – but I’ve ****** enough keys about the guy over the years to at least feel like we ought to exchange Christmas cards.
When I was a sports reporter at a newspaper in suburban Philly, Hopkins was a (supposedly) aging middleweight champion set up to be the sacrificial lamb for Don King and Felix Trinidad in the finale of a tournament whose climax was set for Sept. 15, 2001 at Madison Square Garden.
The fight was pushed back for obvious reasons, but I still recall arriving in midtown Manhattan that night sure I was going to witness a torch-passing. I settled into my seat alongside, of all people, former New York Jets defensive back Johnny Sample, and waited for my mid-rounds TKO forecast to unfold.
Instead, I got a lesson from a 64-year-old ex-Super Bowl champion.
“Don't forget, he's in there with a man tonight,” Sample said vociferously, contrasting Hopkins’ trademark sturdiness with the relative ease in which Trinidad's previous foes had fallen. “Bernard's been through the wars. Bernard's had a hard life. That's going to matter in there. Wait and see.” [Click Here To Read More]
It’s not as if we’re Facebook friends or anything – and I notice that I have yet to be invited to swim laps with him as he goes through his pool-centric fight-prep routine in Philadelphia – but I’ve ****** enough keys about the guy over the years to at least feel like we ought to exchange Christmas cards.
When I was a sports reporter at a newspaper in suburban Philly, Hopkins was a (supposedly) aging middleweight champion set up to be the sacrificial lamb for Don King and Felix Trinidad in the finale of a tournament whose climax was set for Sept. 15, 2001 at Madison Square Garden.
The fight was pushed back for obvious reasons, but I still recall arriving in midtown Manhattan that night sure I was going to witness a torch-passing. I settled into my seat alongside, of all people, former New York Jets defensive back Johnny Sample, and waited for my mid-rounds TKO forecast to unfold.
Instead, I got a lesson from a 64-year-old ex-Super Bowl champion.
“Don't forget, he's in there with a man tonight,” Sample said vociferously, contrasting Hopkins’ trademark sturdiness with the relative ease in which Trinidad's previous foes had fallen. “Bernard's been through the wars. Bernard's had a hard life. That's going to matter in there. Wait and see.” [Click Here To Read More]
Comment