My headline for this essay might be a bit of a fan fooler but, please read on.
Now it can be told, indeed, about Bernard ?Executioner? Hopkins, the ex-convict who became a Hall Of Fame boxer.
Now it can be told about a situation involving BHop and what I might call ?performance enhancing drugs? and it’s a story that that the Philadelphia fighter never thought would get published.
But here it is and it’s something which sheds a positive rather than a negative light on Hopkins and shows him to a goodhearted soul who went into his pocket for a boxing guy who was on the ropes.
X marks the spot when Bernard Hopkins enters the boxing ring as judge, jury and Executioner
The teller of the tale is Hopkins’ beneficiary, my old friend and boxing journalist Jack ?KO JO? Obermayer, the self described fight ?nut? who has covered fight shows, big small and medium across 48 different states.
A Vietnam veteran, Obermayer is such a dedicated follower of the sport that once he took R & R time away from the jungles of ‘Nam to go to the pleasure center that was wartime Bangkok.
But Obermayer didn’t take leave to Thailand for the reason most GI’s did. He went there to watch Scottish world flyweight champion Walter McGowan get stopped by Thai ring hero Chartchai Chionoi.
When he came back from Vietnam, Oberayer began writing about boxing cards for Boxing Illustrated, then under the astute editorship of Lew Eskin. When he was not covering bouts, Eskin was a good referee.
Courtesy of writer-photographer Bob Mladnich, The Sweet Science – Fight scribe Jack “KO JO” needed money for lifesaving drugs and Bernard Hopkins whipped out his checkbook
He also hooked up with boxing’s best muckraker, the eccentric but incorruptible Malcolm ?Flash? Gordon. Gordon published his ?Tonight’s Boxing Program,? out of his cramped apartment in the Sunnyside section of Queens and constantly targeted ?Dung King? and ?Marsa Bob Arum and the Top Rank Plantation.?
KOJO didn’t write with the poison pen, take no prisoners style of ?Flash? but he knew more about every four round fighter on the Eastern seabord than any person alive.
Back on May 31, 2005, Obermayer explained his fascination with the fight game to now retired NYPD Det. Bob Mladnich, another writer who has the ?boxing bug? and said:
?I?ve been going to fights since 1963,? said the always enthusiastic Obermayer, who is the most youthful looking 61-year-old you will ever meet. ?My first show ever was the Cassius Clay-Doug Jones fight at the old Garden. The day the tickets went on sale, I was eighth in line. I said I wanted two ringside seats, but was told the best available seats were in the twelfth row. It was a learning experience. I?ll never forget that night. The place was packed, it was a great fight, and there were cops on horseback. I always loved boxing, but from that day on I was hooked on being there live.
?Boxing is my passion, and I?m lucky to have one,? he explained. ?I?m hooked on the sport, whether I?m watching four-round preliminary kids or twelve-round title fights. Sometimes I get a bit jaded, and I don?t get as excited over things as I used to. The funny thing is that I used to have lots of boxing heroes, but now I?m older than most of them. My three favorite fighters of the modern era are Rocky Lockridge, Bobby Chacon and Matthew Saad Muhammad, and I?m older than all of them.?
Fast forward to last March and Obermayer, a Staten Island native who drifted to New Jersey, was in poor health.
He needed to have a liver transplant at age 65 and he was not employed. He had no serious health care coverage package to rely on.
Having known Hopkins since before he turned pro, Obermayer told him about his plight.
?I told Bernard I could get the operation but I did not have the funds to pay for prescriptions, which came to a total of just under $4,000,? the writer said.
I think it’s fair to call them “performance enhancing drugs” as, if he did not take them, Obermayer would not be alive today.
Without the slightest hesitation, Bhop whipped out a checkbook.
He signed a check made out to by Obermayer for $3,920 and now the drugs were going to be paid for. And they were in short order.
I asked KOJO if he properly thanked Hopkins, especially where the fighter sought no publicity about his good deed.
Here, Obermayer couldn’t resist being a wisenheimer, a sarcastic boxing writer.
?Of course I did,? Obermayer told me Saturday night at the small fight show at Aviators in Brooklyn.
?But I waited until the check cleared.?
And that’s the true story of a small but telling act of kindness committed by Hopkins.
Underneath that crusty exterior, there is a genuine mensch.
Turns out the scary “Executioner” getup just masks his true nature.
