Perception is everything. Life is a “glass half empty” vs. “glass half full” drama for everyone, and which one we choose dictates the rest of our choices.
When Bernard Hopkins (47-4-1, 32 KOs) looks back at his career, he can see either a man who hasn’t lost a fight since 1993, against first ballot Hall of Fame inductee Roy Jones Jr., or he can see a man who, more recently, lost two fights to Jermain Taylor then decisioned a badly faded Antonio Tarver. Apparently, this “Executioner” is an optimist.
His optimism isn’t that of a dreamy-eyed idealist or capricious romantic. His optimism has been sharpened by circumstance and burnished by decades of hard choices.
He grew up in the unforgiving streets of Philadelphia and chose to be a thug in order to survive. He then found himself in Graterford prison, where thugs like him were on the bottom of the food chain. It was there that he developed the character trait that has defined his life and career ever since. Discipline.
For nearly sixteen years, from February 1990 to December 2005, he managed to keep his light-heavyweight sized 6’1” frame pared down to the middleweight limit of 160 lbs. His first fight in 1988, a majority decision loss against Clinton Mitchell, was at light-heavy.
Unlike fighters who seem to pride themselves on how fat they get between fights and how hard they have to train in order to make weight, Bernard waltzes right back into the gym merely days after each fight. Nor does he indulge in the luxury of empty calories in between training camps. His life is a training camp.
Training for his showdown with Winky Wright (51-3-1, 25 KOs) on July 21 is being overseen by Freddie Roach at the Wild Card gym in Los Angeles, CA. Freddie came on board after Bernard’s trainer, Nazim Richardson, suffered a stroke. Richardson is recovering and is expected to be in Hopkins’ corner for the fight.
At this point in Hopkins’ career, there is little that any trainer can teach him, but that’s not to say there isn’t some benefit to having new sights and sounds to motivate with. Motivation is what Hopkins seeks at this stage in his career.
A penny pinching multi-millionaire like Hopkins doesn’t need money. A fighter with 20 consecutive middleweight title defenses doesn’t need to build his legacy. A future Hall of Fame inductee doesn’t need another pat on the back. Although he has said that he doesn’t like to box, that it is simply his job, it is more than that. It defines him.
The by-product of discipline is habit and it is Bernard Hopkins’ habit to get up in the morning and run. It is his habit to go to the gym and train. It is his habit to find a new enemy, learn his strengths and weaknesses to the smallest detail, devise a plan to overcome those strengths, magnify those weaknesses and vanquish him.
His actions aren’t dictated by his environment. While many observers bemoan his reluctance to try and outgun his opponents from the opening bell, he knows, as all learned warriors do, that victory isn’t defined by destruction of the enemy, but by destroying the enemy’s will to fight.
Bernard sees the 12 rounds of a championship as a complete entity. The early rounds are a laboratory for testing his opponent’s reflexes, defense, strength, chin and will. If he loses early rounds he doesn’t get rattled. They have served their purpose. He has a way of shifting momentum in a fight, almost imperceptibly, until one realizes that Bernard is landing the cleaner, harder shots and his opponent’s expression has morphed from confidence to concern.
While his fight against 35-year-old Winky Wright, at a 170 lb. catch weight, doesn’t promise breathtaking action, Wright’s tight defense and controlled aggression present an interesting tactical puzzle for Hopkins that hardcore boxing fans are curious to see if he can solve. Wright, while needing to come up in official fight weight, has had to lose actual weight (he walks around at about 190 between fights) and is the betting favorite.
If he wins, says Hopkins, he continues to fight. To remain a viable light-heavyweight he needs to stick to ranked light-heavies, and at his age, only belt holders make much sense. The question is: Is he willing to do that? Even for the disciplined, especially for the disciplined, hard choices never stop.
