“I will bring all that I know I can to the table to not only win this fight, but to win this fight to the point where the judges are not even needed. And that is out of character for me, but even the last fight was out of character because I brought it to him. I will bring it to him even more this time because I believe in my heart that if he tries to preserve himself, he gets knocked out and if he tries to fight and tries to end it or get a big lead, I may get knocked down again 2 or 3 times, but I will get up and I will destroy Pascal,” stated future Hall of Famer Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins as he talked more about his highly-anticipated May 21st rematch with WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal. You don’t want to miss what else he had to say as Hopkins drops knowledge for the younger generation and promises to do the same to Pascal. Check it out!
PC: We left off with you being surprised that boxing people wouldn’t find your story interesting. Boxing saves lives and you are living proof.
BH: When people come to me, or my nephews come to me saying, “Uncle Bernard, I need this or that,” I just look at them. You know what the problem is today? No matter if you’re white, black, Chinese or whatever, I hear it all of the time because they come to me to talk to their sons in the suburbs all the time…they treat these young men…mother’s gotta start taking the Taffy out of these young men’s mouths or they gonna turn around and be you. They gonna start wearing your wigs, they gonna grab a pocket book, and they gonna put your panties on. I shut the whole building down; everybody started clapping because I gave it to them raw. I didn’t come in there like, “Well, I’m Bernard Hopkins,” all tight in the ass with a suit on. I gave them something that they want to say, but they can’t say. They ain’t got the knowledge to say it because they can’t understand it. They are afraid about hurt feelings. Who is paying the mortgage? “We are.” Who is feeding who? “I am.” And you’re scared? You know what I told them? I said, “You’re all punks. Don’t come to me complaining. Ain’t nobody give me nothing.” I’m not an angry black man. I’m just trying to tell the ones who are making our men, who will soon be soldiers, doctors, lawyers, cops or whatever, that you’re making them out to be punks. What’s wrong with this world man?
PC: The funny thing is the fighters are the same way. There are only a handful of real fighters in the game today and it’s a spin off to what you said about the upbringing of a lot of the kids today. It transfers to the work place.
BH: I don’t know, I might sound frustrated to you and I am, but realistically, this is the type of dude that I am, man. It ain’t my problem, but eventually, it is my problem because I got nieces and I got nephews and they caught up in that world, man. So it is a problem because they are all a reflection of our future.
PC: I agree. The thing Brother Naaz always talks to me about is this being a microwave era and these kids want it now. They don’t want to work for it anymore.
BH: Man, I don’t know if it’s the crack babies from the ’80’s and ’90’s. I don’t know, man, because the stuff I see on the streets…these young bulls come to me like, “Hey old head, give me a job, man.” Give you a job? First of all, you see, I can talk to them because they got respect for me. I’ll say, “Give you a job? You know you just messed up just now.” And then he starts laughing, “Nah, nah.” So they know that their approach is wrong. Give him a job? The word give is important. Ain’t nobody giving you jack shit. What are you talking about? The outcome is this, and I’m going to share this with you. You go to your daughter, your son, your nephews and your nieces, teenagers or just those old enough to understand. There is always an example in your hood or where you live of those who are still living, but they’re really dead walking around. They are the sacrificial lambs to show the others before they make the decision to go left or right. Why not give an example of real life examples that are in front of us? This is what crack does to you. Ride them around the corner and show them a crack person, and you can show them without downing or degrading that person. You can show them all kinds of realities that’s realistic and real, without coming across as their teacher or principal, and say, “This is what jail does to people. This is what being shot does.” Every city has a program where they take kids and show slides of people who got shot or show a dead person all cut up and shot 5 times. They need to see that, dawg. They need to see what alcohol does to the liver. They need to see what marijuana does to your brain and to your memory. You go to the Wax Museum and they show you a dead body. Why not show them that. I spoke in front of 500 Temple University students and I told them that the real examples are in front of your face because everybody here knows somebody who is a family member or friend that’s on crack, went to jail, steals or robs people, etc. I told them they didn’t have to raise their hands or reveal who it is, but at the end of the day, use them as your example because everybody’s not gonna be good. To be good, you gotta have bad; to be bad, you gotta have good. Both of them gotta exist off of each other. How do we know what’s good if we don’t have bad? You’re not gonna know bad if you haven’t experienced good.
PC: I didn’t want this to be a typical boxing interview where we talked strictly about boxing and I love the direction the interview is going in because we’ve talked a lot about your story and your ability to come out of a bad situation and have a redemption story. You are good friends with Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick. How proud are you of him for cleaning his life up and having the type of success he had on the football field last year?
BH: Man, first of all, he’s a person that got a second chance because he was given it and he took advantage of it the same way I did. Most people would have thrown the key away. Somebody of my status wants to redeem himself and do my time like the country has laid down. You do the crime, you do the time. And to resurrect his career, to me, man, am I surprised? No! Am I surprised how people were in front of the stadium talking about, “Dog killer,” and now you can’t find one sign out there? Everybody has their own agenda or reasons for wanting to castrate the other guy, but if we all would be held accounted for our sins, then the world would be empty. If all of us was doomed or assassinated by everything that we have done and still going to continue to do, this world would be empty. So Michael Vick did what I expected him to do, rise. And I know he wanted to come back. He didn’t want to take low money. He wanted to stay here and do what he had to do. But at the end of the day, man, if as person is given a chance and he wanted to make something out of that, look at Bernard Hopkins and look at Michael Vick. Look at the people that have already done these things, man. Look at…to me…the biggest hypocrites are the people that are always pointing and saying, “Look at him, look at him, look at him!” The bottom line is at the end of the day, he was wrong, he atoned for it, and he did the time for it, and at the end of the day, we’re teaching our youth. We’re teaching people about redemption. Let’s use the people that have lived it and turned their life around for others that don’t make the mistake the first time. See, we want to stop them from making the mistake the first time to even think about the second time. But there are examples out there, and Michael Vick is an example, I am an example, and there are a lot of other people out there that are examples. Bumpy Johnson is another good example that there is no life success in drug dealing. At the end of the day, Jay-Z is a good example that you can come from the Marcy Projects selling crack and selling dope to become a CEO with gross worth being $200 to $300 million dollars. People need these examples. And my example as a business man crossing over to the world, that started 8 or 9 years ago. I want to be the Magic Johnson in boxing. I want to be the Jay-Z in boxing; the business side of that. I want to be Russell Simmons, who I had a nice conversation with out in L.A. during All-Star weekend. I want to be Steve Harvey and those types of minds wrapped up in one and that makes me dangerous to some because if I’m thinking of goals like that, then the sky is the limit for guys and girls like me. We’re not stopping just because we got a little honey on our tongue, if you know what I mean.
PC: I definitely understand what you’re saying. The future for someone like Bernard Hopkins is supposed to be holding a spit bucket or training fighters. and I would love to see you impose your skill set on young fighters, so I’m not knocking trainers, but you’re setting yourself up to be sitting in an office behind a desk and that goes beyond the sport that saved your life.
BH: Which I’m sitting talking to you on my cell right now, but I am in my office watching over one of my businesses down in Philadelphia. I’m literally sitting here right now in my office.
PC: There you go. That’s the American Dream. Your life has come full circle. I have to ask you, at age 46 and still fighting at a very high level, do you still feel like you’re learning within the sport of boxing?
BH: Yes. I have to learn. Once you stop learning, you stop being a teacher and you stop being a student. Learning always outweighs the life of any human being on earth. There is always something new to learn. There is always a new message, always a new philosophy, and always a new path to go on. And at the end, as I get older, things get different and as you get older, things will get different, so you have to learn different things if you’re going to compete. And those things that you have to learn while you’re in that ring must not be yesterday, but it must be tomorrow. So I’m always looking at the young fighters to see how they’re doing things compared to how I used to do it to be able to compete in their world. See, Michael Jordan’s great, but the Michael Jordan era has passed and then the Lebron James and Kobe Bryant era began. Every era is set by the great ones. The Wilt Chamberlin’s of the world. The Muhammad Ali’s if you’re talking boxing; the Joe Louis’, the Riddick Bowe’s, the Lennox Lewis’, the Marvin Hagler’s, the Ray Leonard’s, the Bernard Hopkins’, the Roy Jones’, the Evander Holyfield’s, Floyd Mayweather and Pacquiao. And then it will be the Amir Khan’s knocking on the door of superstardom. It goes on and on and in every generation in every topic in the world of life. Even in NASCAR racing, you have the elite that will set the stage; they set the bar. They have lawyers that will set the bar; the late great Johnnie Cochran, who will never be forgotten even if it’s only for the O.J. case. But you got the bar set for another black attorney somewhere in the world, somewhere in some city, that will rise up amongst the other. And I’m not gonna say average, but they will do something extraordinary where the attention will be greater on them. The leaders will be set out to the forefront to lead the pack of good to become the great ones. Every era in every set of life, there are people in every set, from one point to another, who will set a stage for the next generation; whether that bar is the highest high, there will always be another generation that will try to surpass that. That’s where life becomes great, to be able to sit back and live through your era and experience it and watch it.
PC: I can keep you on the phone all day, but I know you are a busy man. I want to give you the opportunity to let the fans in Canada know what they can expect from Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins on May 21st?
BH: They can expect to see more than what they seen on December 18th. They can expect to see the teacher bring more tests to the young student and to see if he’s going to be able to pass the second level of testing because he couldn’t pass the first level. I’m not going to downgrade my strategy, but I will downgrade his grade. I will bring all that I know I can to the table to not only win this fight, but to win this fight to the point where the judges are not even needed. And that is out of character for me, but even the last fight was out of character because I brought it to him. I will bring it to him even more this time because I believe in my heart that if he tries to preserve himself, he gets knocked out and if he tries to fight and tries to end it or get a big lead, I may get knocked down again 2 or 3 times, but I will get up and I will destroy Pascal! His career will be really questioned after this fight is over with and I will leave the fans with that. It’s going to be one of the fights that you don’t want to miss. This fight right here is going to be better than Pacquiao and “Sugar” Shane Mosley because of the drama that this fight is going to bring, other than what people think is going to happen to Shane, which I disagree with. But they can look for an exciting fight man. If they think I won the first time, there will be no question the second time.
PC: I appreciate your time. Best of luck to you in May and I look forward to speaking to you again in the near future. I am a part of a mentoring program at my old high school [S.A.V.E Mentoring Program] and I will play this interview back to the students I mentor because you dropped a lot of knowledge here my man. Thanks!
BH: No problem! How old are the kids who you are letting hear this tape?
PC: They are all either high school juniors about to become seniors or seniors trying to graduate from high school, so I would say around 16 or 17.
BH: Perfect age. That’s when you gotta get ’em and sometimes that’s even too late. Right after high school you gotta get ’em because if you don’t get them at that point, I’m not going to say give up, but a lot of them are going to be sacrificed to let the others know what not to be like. Since I know you’re doing this, I gotta say one thing to the students because they are going to hear it. Everybody listening to this, all of the juniors and seniors, always remember, to be independent is power. To be dependent on something or somebody is to be a slave in many ways. Not the slaves on the fields with the shackles. That was another era. There are different ways of being that now. Independence is power, so if they can learn that early in their lives, to be independent; especially the guys. If you are an independent guy, that’s 30% out of 100% of your life that’s in order. Have a nice day students and I hope you graduate.
