By Johnny Ortiz
On December 3, Golden Boy Promotions in association with DiBella Entertainment will present the highly anticipated rematch between challenger (it seems odd to refer to Bernard as a challenger) Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins and middleweight champion Jermain "Bad Intentions" Taylor. Bernard intends to take back what he firmly believes is his…that being the sole possessor of the undisputed middleweight championship. A title he feels was unceremoniously removed from his head by Taylor.
Their fight is being billed as Hopkins –Taylor II "No Respect." From all of the press I have been reading the past several weeks, most of it has to do with Taylor, from his not respecting Bernard to his singing "Hound Dog, crying all the time" with an Elvis impersonator at his Memphis training camp. ‘Crying all the time’ is in reference to Bernard, who Taylor says is incessant on insisting he was robbed of the decision. Something I happen to emphatically agree with.
At his Big Bear training site, Bernard revealed his thoughts on the Jermain and Elvis duet. "A fake Elvis and a fake champion. I am going to stick porcupine needles in him and then I’m going to knock him out." Other than that, not much has been reported on Hopkins, but I am secure in the thought that as the fight draws nears, Bernard will have plenty to say concerning the highly expected rematch. Before I get into the December 3rd fight, I have to do a little rehashing in regards to their first fight. First off, Bernard has a legitimate beef about the outcome of their previous championship fight.
Compubox statistics had Bernard avoiding 81% of Jermain’s punches, yet judges Duane Ford and Paul Smith were dead even in scoring the fight 115-113 in favor of Taylor, Jerry Roth and I were in agreement with scores of 116-112. One judge gave Jermain the 12th and final round, a round Bernard won huge. A poll of boxing reporters taken after the fight had 15 picking Bernard as the clear-cut winner while only 2, including Larry Merchant, had Taylor the victor. The majority of the writers polled had Hopkins winning the bout by a margin of four. As I wrote in my article following the fight, the statistics favored Bernard; he landed 10 more punches (96-86) in the fight than did Jermain.
As a kid, I was taught that the guy who lands the more punches in a fight, usually wins. Bernard lost in the jab category 17-36, but in the power punch department, a stat that more than not wins it for a fighter, Bernard outlanded Jermain by 28 punches, 78-50. If you have a tape of the fight, it is very evident that Bernard landed the better, harder punches, a right hand visably hurt Jermain in the 7th round, he duplicated the hurt in the 10th round when behind two hard rights and a left hand caused Jermain to turn his back twice on Bernard, it is a maneuver that is used when a fighter wants to temporarily avoid further punishment.
Bernard also had the better of it in the 11th and 12th rounds. If the fight had gone another round, it is quite conceivable that The Executioner would have stopped Taylor. "Bad Intentions’ had better consider himself lucky it wasn’t a 15 round fight, he would have never heard the final bell. Bernard Hopkins is a throwback fighter, 15 rounds would have been made to order for him. He is like the fighters of old, the longer the fight, the stronger they get. Reliving the first fight will not give Bernard back the title he successfully defended 20 times, in his mind he will have to beat Jermain a second time. Along with Jermain Taylor, He will also be fighting Father Time, the following month after the rematch; BoHop will turn 41years young on January 15th. If it were any other fighter, I would not pick him to win, but Bernard is no ordinary fighter, if any fighter can pull it off, surely it is Bernard Hopkins. Like a great thoroughbred champion horse, my money is on "The Philly Junkyard Dog" until the day he runs his last race.
I am by no means ignoring the vast talents of Jermain Taylor; he has the one ingredient that Bernard carried so brilliantly early in his career…youth. I have always said that youth must be served, when there is a big age disparity, I have more than not picked the up and coming kid. In life there will always be exceptions to the rule, in this case, Bernard Hopkins is the exception.
He is a fighter caught in a time warp; he is part old time pug and part modern day fighter. Where Jermain has talent and youth on his side, Bernard has talent and experience going for him. He knows all the tricks that Jermain will one day acquire, by fighting Bernard he learned a lot from a master fighter about championship boxing. The analogy I like to make is that of an actor going into a heavy scene with Marlon Brando, he can only emerge a far better actor by going toe to toe with the man the majority of people in the acting profession will always consider to be America’s greatest actor, so it will be with Jermain Taylor. He has already learned a very meaningful lesson from their first confrontation; he cannot fall into the many traps Bernard set for him the first time around. He now knows that Bernard Hopkins starts out slow in his fights, this is BoHop’s way of seeing what the other guy has while giving his opponent false hope in thinking he is running from them.
Jermain must rethink his fight plan; he now knows that by continually chasing Bernard around the ring, he burns up a lot of unnecessary energy. Bernard is so smart, he is willing to lose some early rounds, all the while setting his clock until he sees that the other guy is starting to lose some steam, like a junkyard dog, this is when The Executioner makes his move. He employed this plan to perfection in their previous fight. Taylor even had this to say after the fight: "I was wasting a lot of energy chasing him around the ring when I should have been trying to cut off the ring." By doing so, the professor lured the student into his web during the early rounds; when he saw fit, it was he, who became the aggressor going into the latter part of the fight.
Jermain will not only have to deal with a champion with all-time greatness credentials, but a champion who methodically evaluates your every move. As a former trainer, I personally would have liked to see Bernard make his move a little earlier, but who am I to question a champion who went into their fight undefeated in over 12 years. He may be 40 years old, but BoHop has the body and energy of a 25-year-old kid. The old adage "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" comes into play in his fights. I am not naïve to think that Bernard can go on forever, if this fight were being fought a year or more down the road, I would have to seriously rethink Bernard’s chances of winning, but four months?
Jermain has been spouting off a lot during his training camp interviews, he recently said this about Bernard: "As a boxer, I don’t respect him, he doesn’t respect me as a champion so I don’t respect him. I can’t respect a guy who doesn’t respect the sport of boxing. I want to tell people to just know it’s going to a different Jermain Taylor that goes in that ring. All I am saying is, I know this man has no power, I know he has no speed, he cannot beat me." That is all well and good, but if I were his trainer, I would tell Jermain to get that nonsense out of his head, for one thing, I would remind him of the punishment he took over the last four rounds of the fight. If it weren’t Bernard dishing out the heavy leather, I would tell him, ‘watch out for the referee, someone is hitting you.’ No speed? Bernard made him miss 81% of his punches; I wouldn’t call that standing still. I understand that it might be Jermain’s way of psyching himself into thinking Bernard has a lot of weaknesses, Jermain must train to win, he has said he intends to correct the mistakes he made in the first fight, that he now knows how to beat Bernard.
Again, were I his trainer, I would drill into his head that he wasn’t the only one in that ring that night, my having followed Bernard his whole career, Jermain has to know that the wise Hopkins, having already gone 12 rounds with him, has been studying the fight films, he too, now knows first hand the weaknesses and strengths of Jermain Taylor. Being a highly instinctive fighter, you can make book that Bernard will put to good use the mistakes Jermain may have not corrected. Jermain Taylor is an excellent fighter who has to put his stiff, great jab into effect throughout the fight, he has to throw more than 36 jabs in a fight with The Executioner, and the same goes for Bernard. Look for Jermain to conserve his energy early, he has to go at an even pace throughout the fight, making his move when he feels right, he’s quick, he has to jump on every opening he sees. By fighting at an even pace, he can still take the fight to Bernard without wasting precious energy. If he starts backing up, Bernard will take over the fight.
To win he has to make Bernard use his forty-year-old legs, he has to be ready when BoHop makes his patented moves in order to take over the fight completely just the way he did in their first tussle. By fighting at an even pace with Bernard, he will be better equipped to step on the gas peddle in the later rounds when Bernard will most assuredly put his peddle to the metal. No one knows better than Bernard that he will again be in with a young, strong 27-year-old kid. What he was once able to do at 27, he now has to emulate at 40, he knows the clock is ticking. Jermain Taylor must not even think he is in with an old-timer, what he had better focus on is the fact that he will be in with an all-time great who is a fierce competitor who doesn’t know how to lose, losing is not in his vocabulary, Bernard in his heart knows Jermain Taylor did not beat him on the night of July 15, 2005.
It was a boxing travesty losing a decision in their first fight, Bernard knows what he has to do, he has to put the first fight behind him, he has to use every bit of his vast experience if he is to upend the young kid from Little Rock AR. Jermain Taylor will get better and better with each fight, he is without a doubt, a worthy heir to the throne, but for now, he has the monumental task of beating a fighter who will one day stand along side of the incomparable Sugar Ray Robinson as one of the greatest middleweight champions of all time. Bernard Hopkins is not only my friend, but also a special person I have long admired during his long tenure as a professional fighter. As for Jermain Taylor saying that Bernard doesn’t respect the sport of boxing, I have no idea where he is coming from.
At twenty-seven, Jermain has stepped right into the spotlight, Bernard toiled for years on end trying to get a big money fight, he fought for peanuts compared to the money fighters such as Taylor are making today. For those of you who may be familiar with Shakespeare, I would like to quote my condensed version of Hamlet’s Soliloguy: "To be or not to be (a big money champion) Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of trouble, and by opposing, end them, To be or not to be, that is the question." Bernard Hopkins did just that, he sat back and watched fighters not nearly as talented as he, make absurd purses. He had faced his sea of troubles and opposed them, he had no choice but to take the slings and arrows; he had waited a lot of years with nothing but determination and bravado as his only allies.
Prosperity finally reared its head in the name of Promoter Don King who put Bernard into the middleweight tournament of four that for all intent and purpose had already, in King’s mind, been conceded to Felix Trinidad. BoHop told everyone who would listen that he was going to win it all. Not many took him serious. I was one of the very few that picked Bernard to win the tournament; there was never a doubt in my mind that Bernard Hopkins was the best middleweight on the planet. As far as I was concerned, Bernard winning was a no-brainer. Roy Jones Jr. also picked Bernard to win it all, he had hoped to fight Trinidad himself in a huge money fight. Roy was adamant when he told Don King that it was a mistake matching him with Hopkins, he had fought Bernard years earlier, he knew Felix could not beat him. He informed King that he would blow a very lucrative fight between himself and Tito.
I remember when I told my both my listeners and callers on my radio boxing show at ESPN that not only was I picking Bernard to beat Felix Trinidad, but that he was going to knock him out, I took a lot of friendly ridicule, I took it in stride, I always knew that I would eventually have the last laugh. As a fighter, they didn’t know him the way I did. Very few gave The Executioner a chance. So you see Jermain, you are way off base saying that Bernard Hopkins does not respect the sport of boxing, he has been a huge contributor to the sport…he has more than paid his dues. My special friendship with Bernard Hopkins began when he was in Los Angeles to help promote the fight; he got wind that I had openly picked him to win by KO on my radio show. It’s funny, but after he beat Tito, they came out of the woodwork, a lot of people were now saying they had picked Hopkins all along. Bernard and I knew better, we knew who they were. One of my cherished boxing treasures is a CD that the McDonnell-Douglas producer Danny Lujan made for me when Bernard was an in-studio guest on their show.
Bernard did a full five minutes on me, retelling my prediction and of our friendship; the CD means as much to me as the big copper coin Sugar Ray Robinson gave me at the Main St. Gym a long time ago, the coin bears his image on the front, on the back is an engraving of his youth foundation. It is going to be a great fight, one no fight fan will want to miss. One could not arrange a better stage setting, a long time champion who has proven he deserves to be spoken of among the all-time greats, going up against a strong, young warrior who must remind Bernard of himself once upon a time.
I can’t help thinking what kind of a fight it would have been at the same age of 27, but then reality sets in…Jermain would not have beat him then and he will not beat him at 40. As tough a fight as it will be for the both of them, I will be rooting like hell for my friend. Bernard Hopkins will not be fighting much longer, so if you want to see greatness in action…be sure to tune in on December 3, 2005. When he does eventually hang them up, he will be sorely missed, boxing will lose a great competitor. His kind only comes around once in a fistic lifetime…"Viva El Executioner!"
OSCAR "CHOLOLO" LARIOS VS. ISRAEL VAZQUEZ - As if the Hopkins-Taylor fight weren’t enough, Golden Boy Promotions, in association with Sycuan Ringside Promotions and DiBella Entertainment, has lined up a terrific co-feature bout. It will be a Super Bantamweight unification bout that will pit WBC champion Oscar Larios against IBF champion Israel Vasquez. The bout is being billed as "The Trilogy Concludes On December 3rd." It will have the two best super bantamweights in the world going head to head. As the billing stipulates, it will be the third meeting between the two little tough guys. In the two fights already fought, there have been two knockouts, on April 12, 1997; the little known Vasquez (11-1) stunned the boxing world when he hung a first round KO on the 20-0 Larios.
The two resumed their rivalry on May 17, 2002, this time; the interim WBC super bantamweight title was up for grabs. Oscar avoided getting knocked out this time around, in a fight worthy of ‘fight of the year’ honors; "Chololo" Larios was able to taste sweet revenge when he stopped Vazquez in the 12th round of a brutal fight. Larios who now sports a record of 56-3-1 w/36 KO’s will be facing his worthy adversary who has upped his resume to 38-3 w/27 KO’s. Larios has defended his title 9 times while his foe has successfully defended his twice. Come December 3, these two little Mexican - born warriors have a score to settle with one another, this fight coupled with Hopkins-Taylor, is well worth the PPV money. In boxing… it doesn’t get any better than this two fight lineup.
Johnny Ortiz is a member of the World Boxing Hall of Fame board or directors and is a former co-owner of the world famous, legendary Main Steet Gym.
