The magnificence of his accomplishments is every bit as marvelous as the chess playing computer or the self-driving car?
How marvelous are those marvels so that are so much a part of our public imagination that they become routine?
While modern society lacks the flying cars and teleportation that typified science fiction predictions of our contemporary society, there is no shortage of inventions and occurrences that are extraordinary when viewed through a historical lens: high performance computers that fit into watches, 3D-printing of human organs, artificial limbs, the means to modify a human genome. And while many of these technologies are now fairly normal parts of modern society, we are still able to identify how marvelous they are?simply observe the public celebration after every release of a new Apple product to gauge how society fully understands how far we have come, how special our innovations truly are.
Bernard Hopkins wasn?t invented by a Silicon Valley engineer. He was engineered through the fires of the streets, the university of hard knocks, the gym wars of Philadelphia, in Graterford State Correctional Institution, and through a monastic dedication to the study of the sweet science. But the magnificence of his accomplishments is every bit as marvelous as the chess playing computer or the self-driving car.
Like great feats of technology, Bernard Hopkins has made us re-think what is possible.
The possibility that he pushes involves one of the fundamental forces of being a living thing: aging. Biotechnology aims to make aging a reversible process, an act that is useless at best and delusional at worst (given our current knowledge of biology and physics, at least). And so, without a refined understanding of why we age, and how we can delay it, we can only look to human examples of age-defying feats as our only record of what can and cannot be done. And Bernard Hopkins isn?t famous simply because of his age, but because of what he?s been able to do with his body at his age, how he?s been able to take ?Father Time? to the 12th-round.
On Saturday, December 17, Bernard Hopkins will fight 27-year-old Joe Smith (22-1, 18 KOs), the 7th ranked light heavyweight in the world. Smith is absolutely a contender, if not an elite member of his division. He should defeat Hopkins soundly. After all, Hopkins took the worst beating his career in his last bout against Sergey Kovalev (Nov. 2014), a fight that left us all wondering if were we watching the violent ?aging overnight? phenomenon that has plagued so many fighters in the past (where an older fighter appears to lose speed and athleticism abruptly, from one fight to the next).
But when we reflect on this suspicion, we remember that we?ve been here before with Hopkins. He?s been past his ?prime? for many years (whatever ?prime? even means for Bernard Hopkins; he?s probably been past the canonical physical prime for over 20 years), and has vanquished younger, hungrier foe after foe after foe. In fact, feasting on younger, athletic power punchers who were supposed to be his end is one of the purest story arcs of Hopkins? career (his career, of course, has many arcs)?from Felix Trinidad (Sept. 2001), to Antonio Tarver (June 2006), to Kelly Pavlik (Oct. 2008), to Jean Pascal (May 2011) and Tavoris Cloud (March 2013)?Hopkins has taken Father Time deeper into a fight than anyone ever has, has landed more power punches, left the judges as unsure as they?ve ever been.
But make no mistake: at some time late on Saturday, Father Time will defeat Bernard Hopkins. And Father Time will do so independent of the outcome of the fight between Hopkins and Joe Smith. But we?ll be watching to see if Hopkins, one of the great marvels of our time, can remind us once more just how vulnerable Father Time is, and just how malleable the boundaries of possibility are.
