by David P. Greisman
Bernard Hopkins would never admit that he needed help, for the stars to align and for circumstances beyond his control to play out in a manner that benefited him.
Any such admission wound not befit a man whose dedication and discipline meant he never returned to prison, who went from losing his first pro fight to becoming a middleweight titleholder, who asserted control of his own career, sued promoters, and then upset the proverbial apple cart when he toppled Felix Trinidad to prove that he was the best 160-pound fighter in the world.
He jumped divisions, defied multiple calls for retirement, defeated foes who’d been favored to beat him, and boxed in the manner he wanted rather than how others hoped he would perform, all because that was the personality of the man who didn’t just have Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” play while walking to the ring, but had the lyrics changed to better describe him.
Hopkins is in his final crusade now, one that started when he beat Tavoris Cloud in March 2013 to capture a light heavyweight world title. He then set his sights on unifying the other belts in the 175-pound division.
But this crusade couldn’t truly begin in earnest until three months later, when Adonis Stevenson stopped Chad Dawson with one punch that June. And Hopkins’ cause was helped even further in August, when Sergey Kovalev demolished Nathan Cleverly.
Without these events, Hopkins’ final crusade could have been the one that ended more than two and a half years before today, in April 2012, when Chad Dawson defeated him by unanimous decision to become the lineal light heavyweight champion, the man who beat the man who beat the man.
It was fair to question at the time whether that was the end of the line for Hopkins. He had not been beaten up, but he was 47 years old and had just lost to the lone big name titleholder in the division.
There would be no appetite for a third bout with Dawson, not after the debacle that was their pay-per-view first meeting the year before, when Hopkins leaned over a ducking Dawson, who lifted Hopkins up and dropped him to the canvas. Hopkins stayed down with a shoulder injury, though some skeptics considered his reaction to be a mix of antics and histrionics. Their sequel went the distance, but it didn’t provide entertainment.
There were other titleholders at 175: Nathan Cleverly, Tavoris Cloud and Beibut Shumenov. The other notable name, Jean Pascal, had lost to Hopkins in 2011 and had not yet returned to the ring. Hopkins, were his career to continue, would need to hope that these other men with belts would see Hopkins as their best chance at a bigger payday, hoping that his skills had diminished and that his stardom had not, and that they could say they had tested themselves against a legend, someone they may well have idolized.
He’d still drawn good ratings: The 1.837 million who watched Pascal-Hopkins 2 was HBO’s highest single-broadcast rating for the year, not including the combined total for the two same-day showings of Wladimir Klitschko’s win over David Haye. And the 1.572 million who watched Hopkins-Dawson 2 gave HBO its second-highest boxing broadcast in 2012.
A guy like Cloud needed an opponent like Hopkins. He’d faced the lower tiers of light heavyweights, was undefeated, had a world title and had been featured on HBO and Showtime. A win over Hopkins could bring him to the next level.
Hopkins acknowledged as much about a week before the bout: “Anybody that fights in the light heavyweight division makes more money with me, fighting a Hall of Famer, fighting a guy that did it all, and if you can get past Bernard Hopkins that's a notch on anybody's belt in the light heavyweight division, that people will have to respect them and look at them different.”
A win over Cloud could put Hopkins back in the mix.
Hopkins, 48 years old at the time, won a unanimous decision. He took Cloud’s belt. An average of 1.232 million people watched on that evening in March 2013.
But his next crusade — and truly final one — had not yet begun.
Stevenson beating Dawson changed the landscape at light heavyweight, providing a new champion, a new pairing and new style match-up, a new goal for Hopkins to work toward. Kovalev soon entered the picture with his pounding of Cleverly.
The momentum wasn’t for Stevenson vs. Hopkins or Kovalev vs. Hopkins, though. The call was for Stevenson vs. Kovalev, two power-punchers facing off in a potential thriller.
That’s where things seemed to be headed until Stevenson departed HBO earlier this year for Showtime, where Hopkins was being featured. That bout was never signed. Instead, Hopkins opted a few months ago to take a deal that brought him back to HBO to face Kovalev this Saturday in Atlantic City.
As with us all, Hopkins cannot help but get older. He is 49 now, less than two and a half months from turning 50. He is in a young man’s sport. Stevenson is a youthful 37-year-old who turned pro late and is without the wear and tear that a boxer his age would normally have. Kovalev is 31.
Yet it’s never been youth that’s troubled Hopkins. His losses have come when he’s stubbornly limited his offense, doing as little as possible while neutralizing his opponent as happened with Jermain Taylor, or when he’s faced boxers with awkward styles and quick hands, as happened with Joe Calzaghe and Dawson.
Hopkins has used his accumulated experience and his mastery of every little element of the sport to make otherwise capable fighters look lost. It’s not overly surprising that even at this age he has been able to outpoint Cloud, been willing to go to battle with Karo Murat, and topped Beibut Shumenov to unify two belts.
It’s not at all surprising that he thinks himself capable of beating Kovalev, who has scored knockouts or technical knockouts in 23 of his 25 wins but who has never met anyone like Hopkins.
“I've been watching this guy, I dug up amateur fights of this guy, and I know how he breathes, I know how he sits down, I know where he sits down, what he thinks, I know everything about him,” Hopkins said last month. “That's what I do with every opponent that I'm getting ready to fight. I want to know my enemy. I want to know how he thinks. I want to know how he sleeps. I want to know what he's uncomfortable with.”
Hopkins was ringside when Kovalev fought Blake Caparello in August, watching as Caparello scored a flash knockdown when he stepped on Kovalev’s foot and landed a left hand. Hopkins saw Kovalev come back and get the second-round stoppage. He also probably looked back at footage and saw the way that Kovalev responded to the defensive mindset and movement of Cedric Agnew in March.
This is a different crusade than Hopkins would’ve embarked on had Dawson beaten Stevenson, were the 175-pound division also not full of younger opponents who may present capable challenges but whose styles Hopkins knows how to negate. The goal of once again becoming the true light heavyweight champion, as he was in 2006 when he beat Antonio Tarver for the RING title, and as he was in 2011 when he beat Pascal, is a tough one but more realistic than ever.
A win over Kovalev would give Hopkins three world titles, with the fourth belonging to the man who also is lineal champion, Stevenson. A loss, depending on how it happens, could end this crusade.
Now we wait just a handful of days more to see whether Hopkins still has the physical ability to go along with his mental acuity.
The 10 Count
1. Putting the “ill” in Illinois, part one, as brought to you by referee Lou Hall:
We had an idea that it was going to be a rough night watching the junior lightweight bout between Javier Fortuna and Abner Cotto from the moment that Hall opened his mouth.
“PUNCH OUT!” he barked from mid-ring in the UIC Pavilion in Chicago, and I bet he could be heard from all the way across Lake Michigan in South Bend, Indiana.
He barked “PUNCH OUT!” a total of 10 times in the first round, “STOP!” seven times, and “BREAK!” four times, his voice dominating the opening three minutes of action on Showtime even more than Teddy Atlas dominates nearly every single second of broadcast time on your average ESPN2 “Friday Night Fights” episode.
He seemed heavily vocal and unnecessarily loud with the tactic, all compensating for a preference to use commands rather than his physical presence.
This would play a key role more later on. And it was only the beginning of issues with Hall.
2. Putting the “ill” in Illinois, part two, as brought to you by referee Lou Hall:
About 46 seconds into the second round, Fortuna and Cotto were wrestling in a clinch while Hall barked at them from a handful of feet away to punch out. Cotto landed a right hand to the back of Fortuna’s head, followed by another, followed by a third, and only then did Hall begin to move in as Fortuna went to the canvas.
Fortuna got up, Cotto was told to go to the neutral corner, and then Hall began to issue a count on Fortuna, also lifting him up by the shoulder when the standing Fortuna bent forward for a moment.
If that weren’t preposterous enough — given that Fortuna had been decked by three blatant fouls, clear as day to see — Hall then went to Cotto and docked him a point for punching behind the head, in essence acknowledging the foul that had caused the knockdown for which he had just incorrectly counted.
3. Putting the “ill” in Illinois, part three, as brought to you by referee Lou Hall:
Hall’s positioning was poor, which tied in with his desire to bark commands rather than break the fighters up himself. At the end of the second round, the bell rang and Hall was not in position to jump in, stop any action and pull the fighters away from each other. Instead, Cotto pushed Fortuna to break them apart, and Fortuna armed out a weak left hand in protest. Cotto then turned to Hall to complain, and Hall walked to Fortuna’s corner and told Fortuna not to push. Never mind that Fortuna hadn’t pushed.
It got worse.
After the bell rang to end the fourth round, Fortuna began to walk back to his corner and Cotto began to follow, mugging at him. Fortuna threw a right hand that just missed over Cotto’s right shoulder. Hall was watching from all the way across the ring, only bolting forward after the punch was thrown, seemingly oblivious to what Cotto had been doing to begin with.
By the time Hall turned back toward Cotto, the fighter was feigning being hurt by the shot and flopped to the canvas. Hall soon took a point from Fortuna for throwing a late shot that hadn’t actually landed.
Cotto actually had the gall to claim afterward that he’d been caught hard by the punch: “It might look like he didn’t touch me after the fourth ended, but he did. And it hurt,” he was quoted as saying.
4. Putting the “ill” in Illinois, part four:
And all of this calls into question what a referee with Hall’s seemingly limited experience was doing in the ring with Cotto and Fortuna.
BoxRec’s listing for Hall, which may not be comprehensive but is otherwise the best we’ve got, shows Hall as only having worked 22 pro fights on 7 nights going into this past Saturday. His first night, with five bouts on the evening, came back in July 2013 in Iowa. Everything else had been in Illinois since then.
In essence, if this listing is correct, Hall had only been a pro ref for less than 16 months and was going into his eighth night of work and his 23rd pro bout.
Illinois state records, by the way, show that Louis K. Hall has been licensed as a referee there since May 2013.
5. Putting the “ill” in Illinois, part five:
At least those state records are easily available, via an online database for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation that is so comprehensive that it tells you that Marvelous Marvin Hagler was a licensed boxer in the state from Sept. 2, 1981, to Sept. 2, 1982, and that he was never disciplined there.
But try to find out exactly what caused a boxer of more recent vintage to test positive and have his win overturned into a no contest?
That’s what I tried to do last week, after word got out that Donovan George’s decision win over Dyah Ali Davis from back in August had become a no contest. We’d heard that George tested positive for a banned substance, but that it wasn’t a performance-enhancing drug. The claims from the promoter were that George had taken an anti-inflammatory for his hurt hand. George told my colleague Jake Donovan that he had taken Tylenol 3 “baby pain medication” and didn’t tell anyone with the commission.
I wanted to find out if this were true.
I tried calling boxing chief Nancy Illg on Tuesday, Oct. 30, but she wasn’t there at the time, so I went down the list and called the next person, Joel Campuzano. He politely told me that any comment had to go through Illg, whom I also emailed.
Illg responded within less than an hour that she’d forwarded my request to the department’s public information officer, Susan Hofer.
Mind you, at this point the promoter and the International Boxing Organization sanctioning body had already been informed about what had happened.
Hofer emailed me on Thursday, Oct. 30, with a consent order noting that Donovan George and the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation had agreed that George had tested positive in a urine sample taken on Aug. 23 for a prescribed drug, and that George subsequently provided a valid prescription for the medication. George had waived his rights to a hearing and would be suspended for 90 days from the date of the fight, which would become a “no contest.” He also was fined $1,500.
So what was the banned substance?
“I can’t discuss this beyond what is in the order,” Hofer responded.
I asked for what section of Illinois Freedom of Information Act legal code would keep such information from being released. Any denials are supposed to include that information, as well as info on how to appeal. None of that was provided to me.
“Had this matter reached a public hearing the Department would have had to present evidence to a judge prior to disciplinary action being taken,” Hofer said. “However, the parties reached an agreement on the matter, so no additional information is included in the public record beyond what appears in the order you have.”
Let’s take a look at the Illinois Attorney General’s website and review what is considered public record in Illinois:
“All records, reports, forms, writings, letters, memoranda, books, papers, maps, photographs, microfilms, cards, tapes, recordings, electronic data processing records, electronic communications, recorded information and all other documentary materials pertaining to the transaction of public business, regardless of physical form or characteristics, having been prepared by or for, or having been or being used by, received by, in the possession of, or under the control of any public body.”
I’ve put in a FOIA request with Hofer seeking more information — you know, the kind of information that was already disclosed to the promoter, sanctioning body and fighters, which would be part of an investigative record for a case that’s now closed, and for which there would also presumably be correspondence or records of correspondence.
The state has until the close of business on this Thursday, Nov. 5, to respond.
In the grand scheme, this truly isn’t a big deal. But if governments aren’t willing to follow open records laws and the ideals of transparency for the minor things, then how can we expect there to be responsible when it comes to the larger issues?
6. Putting the “ill” in Illinois, part six: By the way, here’s the Chicago Tribune with an article from earlier this year titled “State report: Boxing regulators ran dysfunctional agency” — http://bit.ly/illboxingtrib
(The article has a second page, so don’t forget to click the number “2” down at the bottom.)
The article references allegations against and an investigation into Campuzano, who was on paid leave from the commission for about 33 months. The investigation called for him to be fired, but the case went to arbitration and he was suspended for 10 days before returning to his job.
7. Boxers Behaving Badly: A junior-welterweight prospect named Atif Mushtaq pleaded guilty last month to a charge of having sex with a 14-year-old girl, according to British newspaper Pendle Today.
He also pleaded guilty to one count of “intending to admit the course of public justice,” as he’d told the girl to claim that she’d told Mushtaq that she was 18.
Mushtaq turned 27 on Oct. 30. He is 4-0-1 with no knockouts. His first pro bout was in July 2013, when he drew with a 7-154-6 opponent named Kristian Laight. He went on to win four bouts, all by points, topping a foe who was 0-5, one who was 19-110-7, one who was 3-55-2, and then taking a rematch over Laight this past September.
8. Boxers Behaving Badly update: Adrian Taihia — a light heavyweight from New Zealand who appeared on the Australian version of boxing reality competition “The Contender” — has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison, according to the news website stuff.co.nz.
He’d originally faced several charges but took a deal and entered a guilty plea to one count of “being party to manufacturing methamphetamine,” the report said.
Taihia turned pro in early 2008. By 2009 he was on “The Contender,” losing via second-round knockout to eventual show runner-up Kariz Kariuki. The 32-year-old last fought in October, less than two weeks before his sentencing, winning a four-round decision over a 4-44 opponent named Moses Ioelu, according to BoxRec.
That victory brought Taihia’s record to 14-1-2 with 7 KOs.
9. Consider me stunned. If ever there were going to be a former “Contender” contestant accused of making meth, I thought for sure that it would’ve been a nearly perfectly named former prospect from the second season: Walter Wright.
10. There is a female 102-pound titleholder named Ayaka Miyao.
Now that I’ve given you this tidbit of information, please don’t give into temptation by describing her bouts as cat fights…
“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com
