By Jhonny Gonzalez

Many years have passed since Felix "Tito" Trinidad was defeated by Bernard Hopkins. Their fight took place on September 29, 2001 at Madison Square Garden located in New York City. There were several problems prior to the fight. The tragedy of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York postponed the fight from the planned date of September 15. In an upset, Hopkins stopped Trinidad in the tweflth round to unify the middleweight division.

Trinidad says the date change had a lot to do with the loss. A few days before the Hopkins fight was scheduled to take place [on the new date], Trinidad's personal life began to fall apart. Trinidad's wife found out her husband was having an affair when the news was broken apart by the Puerto Rican media that Trinidad had a baby girl out of wedlock. 

“Look, nine years have passed by since that fight, and I've never talked about it," Trinidad told Jose Sanchez. "There were several factors. In New York (before the fight) there were three days where I couldn't sleep at all with so many things on my mind. 

"Before a big fight, sometimes it's difficult to sleep because you keep thinking 'bloody hell, the guy that I'm going to fight will be very tough.' What affected me were the towers, and the date change also had to do with it. But the situation with my wife is what I had on my mind. That was the main thing, more than anything. Thank God, we overcame it."

If the fight would have went forward on the 15th, Trinidad doesn't think the final result would have been the same because he wouldn't have had all of the personal problems weighing heavy on his mind.

"if the fight had been on 15th, the story would have been different," Trinidad said.