By Patrick Kehoe
He’s mean and cunning and wants each prospective foe to know it, to appreciate the dire consequences they face, the sheer mastery he feels in being feared. Call it projection of his basic defence mechanism because it certainly cannot any longer be called invincibility. After listening to Bernard Hopkins rambling on the record, in full promotional ecstasy, you understand that talk may be cheap, but, it fills in nicely as colour around thick black lines of comic book patterning.
“I’m the consummate fighter... a master boxer... I’m the matador and he’s the bull... There’s no style that I can’t unravel... I am not Jeff Lacy with seventeen fights; I am going to punish the Brit... Take him out into the deep waters.”
Presumably, Hopkins equates besting Winky Wright ten pounds over the Floridians best fighting weight and the self-referential has been, Antonio Tarver, with a mathematical certainty: Hopkins – Wright – Tarver > Calzaghe – Kessler – Lacy. Not that he’s alone; few in boxing seem to realize that Wright and Tarver are both fighting on borrowed time as yesterday’s men. Then again, Hopkins – Calzaghe can be viewed as being all about yesterday’s man.
Yes, “The Brit” refers to Welshman Joe Calzaghe, current supreme boxer extraordinaire in the fistic world and super-middleweight champion slash legend. On the surface, that would make two legends ready to battle it out right around 170-ish pounds. The disclaimers of age – Hopkins 43 years-old and Calzaghe, birthday boy, March 23, 1972, 36 years-old – and weight – the middleweight become light-heavyweight title holder and super-middleweight edging past his absolute pristine sanctuary – are talking points awash with relativism, speculation and common irony. Because age and weight are just factual markers, no one will really care about them the day after.
Bernard Hopkins fighting Joe Calzaghe has little to do with the particulars of championship measure, each having secured their respective legacies at middleweight proper – Hopkins – and middleweight plus – Calzaghe. But all the best comic books are action adventure super heroic thrillers with the forces of evil battling the forces of justice; reality has nothing to do with the fun of it all, the scope and magnitude plays out in the activated imagination of the reader, more than it does on the page itself. Boxing matches between aged and aging legends are the acting out of our own invested imaginative yearnings anyway, aren’t they?
Until recently, championship boxing contests were battles for purported world titles or crowns. This particular contest of kings makes no real presumption as to realms or regions of dynastic ownership, subject to last minute negotiations? And yet, the fight comes at us pregnant with symbolic importance, mainly for partisans, if even only as a scuffle for the right of their respective fans to claim global supremacy in some kind of alternate universe of inconstancy, such as the pound for pound myth arch or the “who would have beaten ‘Sugar’ Ray Robinson” fictional sweepstakes, once a content staple so near and dear to boxing magazine editors.
“It’s going to take his father not to lie to him, let him come back out, and be merciful and stop the beating... It’s going to be like him running into a burning building,” Hopkins has decided. Hopkins’ renown for projecting himself and us into his quick-pics fantasia remains undiminished, despite his temporary humiliation at the fists of Jermain Taylor. In the rhetorical musings of Bernard Hopkins, which defies transcription, grammar and perspective, the geometry of the believable are equally mangled and set forth in the service of poetic purpose. Like great comics, the pictures tell the story.
Truly, Hopkins speaking proves that rationality becomes the play thing for what the desperate and the diligent must make of all things possible. You only have to sound like you believe each and every other word.
And the Philadelphian’s flinty certitude, that never say die defiance has become what his fans and detractors applaud in Hopkins, win or lose, accomplishment or contradiction bare. He can desecrate a Puerto Rican flag and by implication the people for which it stands, insult industrious men or invert the race card and confound us all in answering charges, rightly levelled against his malice, by streaming nonsensical rebuttals back as if an arduous life gives him the licence to say anything, meaning anything, anytime, anywhere, no real harm done, no foul, no fraud intended. He’s an entertainer after all, no rules of conduct need apply. Laugh in the appropriate places, take of it what you must, what you will.
If all his words can cut the heart out of a man, cause confusion and indignation, create some space to exploit, distract intention, put things into his ordering at his commands, then the price paid pays for itself and is worth any cost of damages incurred to his sketched out persona, executioner, promoter, street sage, survivor, villain.
And the buy-in rate for Hopkins being Hopkins never seems to wither. Some actually believe he’s still one of the best fighters in the world, despite the timidity of his boxing, the Roy Jones-like manipulations of his match-making and his 2-2 record in his last 4 professional fights. Optics and the persistence of memory certainly have kept Bernard Hopkins in the ascendency within big time boxing. And who can blame him for exploiting such collective folly. The Philly Fox believes he’s more than capable of punishing and prevailing against Calzaghe, to prove he does, in fact, still retain the full array of his manifold ring talents.
His present use of defense and situation dictate movement, while setting traps, has replaced the vicious counter hitting of his prime years as largely disregarded IBF middleweight title holder. But when aged legends turn up to make a spectacle of themselves less is definitely judged to be more; for we have all seen that Hopkins’ boxing no longer proves the merits of his salesmanship. Hopkins, like a just past prime tennis great, needs his opponent to pile up the unforced errors and effectively beat themselves.
For foes, fans and scribes alike, words can and do certainly confuse the passive, the willing.
“He comes over to America because he wants to prove he’s a legend like me... He’s made twenty title defences and I have made twenty title defences... but, he’s in my league, the big leagues now.” Don’t even try to compare this guy with me, Hopkins wants to make clear. Where once Hopkins described himself as the embodiment of the American Dream after beating Felix Trinidad at Madison Square Garden in middleweight title unification, just after New York’s 9/11 horrors, a bout he waged as much against Ray Robinson’s iconic status as Puerto Rico’s favourite son, now he takes unto his person history itself.
“I’m a living legend,” Hopkins asserts routinely. Being heir to Robinson’s legend has not proved a large enough ground for Hopkins. Now we hear from Hopkins that he’s “the best fighter ever.” Then again one can only wonder what the Dorian Grey of world boxing truly thinks about what he’s saying. Conflate the estimable and who knows what people will believe. P.T. Barnum taught America that the only limit is what remains left to proclaim. If Evander Holyfield and James Toney redefined the art of contradictory public speech, Hopkins has taken point-counterpoint to stratospheric heights. He’s the “old man” and he’s “the consuming fire” of Calzaghe’s impending fate. He’s never been technically better and he’s “forty-three, I’m just leaving my prime.” He’s the underdog and the obvious favourite. Fighting Calzaghe, Hopkins tells us as an aside, is not about the money. Sure Bernard. Indeed, he belongs to American folklore and the limitlessness of space and time, for he’s already been transfigured as “an immortal.” He’s fire and ice, combustion and the chill of death upon the fool-hearty. Hopkins, according to Hopkins, is all things dangerous and wondrous, a man for all seasons.
Seldom in boxing’s post-Ali phase has there been such a creature of spasmodic self-regard. Others are only loony tune imitations, mere tracings. Hopkins can even – almost – make a reference to the founding fathers of American political independence as he babbles near to making a justification for being entitled to say to Calzaghe, “Bitch, I’m going to make you cry.”
The affront might not be that Hopkins felt he had the right to utter such a prejudicial insult while in the throw of promotional smack talk, but, that he could invoke the airs of Franklin and Jefferson, street indoctrination in Philadelphia and being a professional boxer staking his psychological turf for ample and obvious justification for being thusly entitled to defame to his heart’s content. Freedom of speech indeed! For sports writers, it’s just a headliner, Hopkins eminently being Hopkins, more reason to check for Calzaghe’s reaction.
Sure, old fighters are more bombast than bash. Certainly, Joe Calzaghe seated on the promotional dais, thinks so and doesn’t put much stock in Hopkins popping off, up to his old tricks of playing the bully.
“April 19th B-Hop is going to execute the Brit! I’m the 43 year-old living legend right out of the old heart of Philly... It comes down to live style and genetics... I take away your best weapon; I neutralize what you do best... How do I get him to fight my fight, that’s the art of boxing... It takes the right kind of athlete, the street savvy.”
After all, if it weren’t for Hopkins being Hopkins, what would all the fuss be about? In 2008, who would care about simply enduring over time and aging champions fighting for the big money and the true cost of sporting pride?
Patrick Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net