By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Joe Smith Jr. has heard some amusing responses since news began spreading two months ago that he landed a fight against Bernard Hopkins.
“Well, I have a lot people say, ‘Wow! He’s still fighting?,’ ” Smith said. “I’ve had people ask me if it was his son that I was fighting? All kinds of things. But when I say the name, they say, ‘Wow! It’s great.’ ”
Fighting Hopkins indeed is the greatest opportunity of Smith’s life.
If he upsets Hopkins on Saturday night in what is being billed as Hopkins’ farewell fight, it’ll completely change Smith’s career. Stopping Polish light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara in the first round of his last fight moved Smith (22-1, 18 KOs) into position to take part in this HBO “World Championship Boxing” main event (10 p.m. ET/PT) at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
Beating even an aged Hopkins, however, would enable the 27-year-old contender from Long Island to make sure his first premium-cable network appearance isn’t his last.
“It’s gonna open a lot of doors for me,” Smith said. “I’m due to make a nice payday, and I hope by knocking this guy out, it’s gonna get me that in my next fight.”
Simply winning would suffice, but becoming the first fighter to knock out Hopkins in his 28-year, Hall-of-Fame career certainly would transform Smith into a star. Hopkins (55-7-2, 32 KOs, 2 NC) is less than a month shy of his 52nd birthday, yet his chin always has been one of his greatest assets.
Former light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev floored Hopkins in the first round of his last fight. The hard-hitting Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) also hurt Hopkins in the 12th round, when the former undisputed middleweight and light heavyweight champion needed to use every bit of his experience and toughness to avoid getting knocked out for the first time.
Smith says he’ll “pick up where Kovalev left off,” an approach Hopkins expects from a young, strong opponent who wasn’t born when Hopkins made his pro debut in October 1988 in Atlantic City.
“He really has nothing to lose,” Hopkins said. “Because he could always get in line and say, ‘Hey, I lost to Bernard Hopkins.’ OK, that doesn’t mean his career is over. Just get in a long damn line. But if he pulls something off that no one has ever done, then we’re talking something else. Then we’ve got a new star in town. So we’re either gonna see a falling star, or we’re gonna see a rising star.”
Hopkins has been fighting for seven-figure purses since April 2001, when he defeated former WBC middleweight champion Keith Holmes by unanimous decision as part of Don King’s 160-pound championship tournament. The legend from Philadelphia stopped previously undefeated Felix Trinidad in his following fight and has been showcased on boxing’s biggest stages ever since.
Smith, meanwhile, has literally labored in obscurity for most of his life in and out of the ring.
His knockout of Fonfara marked Smith’s first nationally televised fight (NBC Sports Network). Some members of the boxing media criticized Al Haymon for even making a “Premier Boxing Champions” bout between Fonfara and Smith, who hadn’t beaten a legitimate light heavyweight contender before defeating Fonfara.
When he’s not training for fights in his native Mastic, New York, Smith works for Laborers 66, a Melville, New York-based union that employs him in Nassau County and Suffolk County.
“I’m just a laborer,” Smith said. “We do anything. We do it all. It could be anything – sweeping the floor, spackling. We do demo work. We do concrete work. We do all kinds of stuff. We do digging, shoveling.”
Hopkins thinks Smith has taken an assignment even someone as determined and hardworking as him cannot handle. He repeatedly referred to Smith as “common” during the final press conference for their fight Wednesday, when Hopkins reminded reporters, other fighters on the dais and mostly Smith that Hopkins is “special.”
The stoic Smith didn’t seem bothered by how Hopkins tried to utilize the psychological warfare that has so often served him well before fights.
“I’m looking at Bernard, studying Joe, and I can tell that Bernard is saying, ‘This f*cking guy, I’m not getting to him,’ ” said Joe DeGuardia, Smith’s promoter. “Because he’s not. It’s a great thing, because Joe has that makeup where he just doesn’t care or he doesn’t get it. Whatever the case might be, it’s not getting to him.”
DeGuardia knows full well, of course, that Hopkins will get to Smith physically once the bell rings. Though 51 and coming off a two-year layoff, DeGuardia remembers how Hopkins dominated another light heavyweight he promoted, Antonio Tarver, in Hopkins’ light heavyweight debut 10½ years ago in Atlantic City.
There’s a much greater age gap between Hopkins and Smith than separated Hopkins and Tarver. And Kovalev made Hopkins look more than ready for retirement in their November 2014 fight in Atlantic City.
But DeGuardia understands this won’t be an easy fight for Smith, who’s nearly a 2-1 underdog.
“In spite of what some people might think,” DeGuardia said, “and that they’re saying, ‘Oh, Bernard’s 51 years old,’ the reality is Bernard is in tremendous shape, he’s a disciplined fighter, he’s an extremely smart veteran in that ring, extremely smart mentally and physically. He knows how to counteract things, so it’s a difficult fight. I recognize those things. I know those things.”
As the Fonfara fight reminded DeGuardia, though, Smith his more than capable of pulling off an upset.
Before Smith and Fonfara fought, Fonfara (28-4, 16 KOs) had floored WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson (28-1, 23 KOs) in a unanimous-decision loss to him 2½ years ago. In his two bouts before Smith knocked him out, Fonfara also had stopped Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (50-2-1, 32 KOs, 1 NC) in the ninth round and beaten former WBO and current WBA world light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (30-3, 16 KOs) by unanimous decision.
If Smith can add Hopkins’ renowned name to his list of conquests, the former New York Golden Gloves champion will have come quite a long way since Eddie Caminero (then 6-3) stopped the seventh-year pro in the fourth round of their August 2010 bout in Brooklyn.
Smith might even be able to put off returning to his job as a laborer for at least a while if he topples Hopkins.
“It depends on what comes next,” Smith said. “Hopefully something great pops up right after this one. Hopefully I won’t have to go back to work.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
