by David P. Greisman
Photo © Chris Cozzone/FightWireImages

Bernard Hopkins stood about a foot from his red corner, calmly waiting for the ringing of the bell that would start the 54th fight of his 19-year career. In front of Hopkins was Winky Wright, hopping up and down in the blue corner, himself a veteran of 55 bouts, a consummate professional whose 17 years as a prizefighter had taken him to eight countries on four continents.

In the usual build-up of pressers and conference calls, interviews and articles, Hopkins, in his usual loquacious manner, said that he would solve the puzzle that is Wright, making him absorb enough punishment that his face would resemble the swollen mess that Hopkins made of William Joppy’s visage in December 2003. Wright, for his part, said he would dominate Hopkins, shut his trash-talking mouth, break him down and send him “back to the retirement home.”

It was marketed as a high noon showdown, the pairing of two respected clinicians, two practitioners of the Sweet Science who nonetheless, as the slogan went, would be “Coming to Fight.” And for 12 rounds, Hopkins and Wright unleashed their artilleries, but the final bell saw both wannabe gunslingers survive with nary a bullet hole in their vests.

For so long, Hopkins and Wright had sat high on their horses, guiding their careers and devising strategies that were best suited to longevity and victory, even if it meant limiting their potential gains financially and in popularity.

“Back in the day, I was a slick boxer, stick and move, dance around and win the fight easily, and nobody could touch me,” Wright said on a pre-fight conference call. That nostalgia followed a question about his change to a more aggressive style, in which Wright keeps a high guard but comes forward, often behind a southpaw jab or left hand leads. “I guess I moved to that kind of fighting because, you know, the network.”

Ah, the network. Wright had been boxing for nearly a decade before a razor-thin loss to Fernando Vargas propelled him into occasional appearances on HBO. Yet a style that was heavy on jabs but not on knockout power meant that the premium cable outlet’s boxing executives had yet to have their eyes opened by Winky.

Until Shane Mosley.

Mosley was among the many name fighters contracted to HBO, a former phenom whose momentum and undefeated record vanished following consecutive losses to Vernon Forrest. But Mosley’s rematch victory over Oscar De La Hoya earned him two junior middleweight titles and the lineal championship. The top contender was another beltholder – an underestimated mainstay named Winky Wright.

Twice, Mosley faced off against the bigger man. And twice, Mosley lost. Wright was now the 154-pound champion, but he was once again caught in a predictable predicament: No one would fight him, and thus there was no one to fight – until Felix Trinidad came out of retirement.

The 12-round virtual shutout of Trinidad bored some but impressed many, a performance completely different from the manner that Hopkins had dominated Trinidad, a spotlight night that made Wright marketable if not memorable. Wright could have sat back and waited for the winner of that summer’s Hopkins-Jermain Taylor middleweight championship bout.

Wright had his eyes on De La Hoya.

Following his body-shot kayo loss to Hopkins, De La Hoya had initially announced a retreat to the welterweight ranks, later followed by word that his next bout would come at a contractual weight of 150 pounds.

“I see De La Hoya has created a new division for himself,” Wright supposedly said afterward. “Is he calling it ‘Junior Oscarweight,’ or ‘Super Catchweight’? Personally, I think it’s ‘Make Winky Wait.’ ”

Whether those were Wright’s actual sentiments or just another truly brilliant invention of a boxing publicist, there Wright was, the junior middleweight king coming off of his crowning achievement to find that the land before him was featureless and futureless.

And thus, the waiting game that Wright had played while working to make his career finally take off became the weighting game, a permanent move to another division in the hopes of shoehorning himself into the title picture and into prominence. He outpointed Sam Soliman and then got his match with Taylor, the new middleweight monarch. They fought to a draw, and Wright, right or wrong in his motivation, reportedly priced himself out of a rematch.

Back to waiting. A one-sided decision over Ike Quartey was like treading water. An announced challenge of Hopkins, to take place at a catchweight of 170 pounds, was like embarking on a triathlon. Hopkins may have been 42, but he was well-conditioned, rejuvenated by a jump to light heavyweight and ready to follow up on his June 2006 drubbing of Antonio Tarver.

Wright was undaunted.

“I wanted to prove to the world, to everybody, that no matter what weight, if we can get close, then we can fight,” Wright said on a pre-fight conference call. “I’m not a light heavyweight. I’m not a super middleweight. I’m a middleweight.”

So, too, was Hopkins, for more than a dozen years.

“I believe I’m a 168-pounder naturally,” Hopkins said on a pre-fight conference call. “In 1988, I fought at light heavyweight … In between those years, I floated [between] super middleweight, and then I took myself down to middleweight because that’s where it had to happen at and [I’d] been there for over many years.”

Hopkins’ 1993 decision loss to Roy Jones Jr. came relatively early in the Philadelphia native’s career, back before “The Executioner” had truly learned how to execute. But middleweight was where the opportunity would come, and while Hopkins waited he demonstrated the same sort of discipline with his body that he practiced with his money. The man with memberships at multiple discount retailers would abstain from unhealthy foods while training hard to keep his poundage near 160. He picked up a title and defended it against all comers, a belt that brought far more leverage to the bargaining table than the few appearances he made on HBO.

Don King wanted a middleweight champion. Don King wanted Felix Trinidad as his middleweight champion.

King set up a four-man tournament and HBO signed the checks and signed on. Trinidad stopped William Joppy. Hopkins outpointed Keith Holmes. And then Hopkins, with a marvelous technical knockout win, sent Trinidad toward retirement and himself toward stardom.

The waiting game and the weighting game had paid off. The maximum six-figure paydays suddenly added a seventh digit. A pay-per-view extravaganza against De La Hoya brought an eighth. The man who had either too little (or too much) respect or too little recognition to fight under the brightest lights was now headlining pay-per-views thanks to his own star power.

And just when one thought (and Hopkins said) that his career was over, there he was at light heavyweight, fighting now not because he needed to, but because he wanted to.

“When I was in middleweight, I had to reserve certain things because of certain things that I … had to deprive myself [of] for so many years,” Hopkins said on a pre-fight conference call. “Now that I don’t have to do that, the blueprint is June 10, 2006 [against Tarver]. I came out blazing, came out, boxed and fought every round, and I didn’t have to do this.

“I just found a new body. Somehow I just realized that I feel so strong. And, you know, six-foot-one, you know, light heavyweight, you know, I gained a couple of inches around the waist, only two. It was 28, and now it’s 30, 31, sometimes it’s 31. It feels so great that now that I can step back on a gas pedal and not have to worry about, you know, I’m going to take him in deep water, I’m going to get him here and I’ll pick my spots here. I can go full blaze.”

Hopkins may no longer fight as many minutes of each round as he did against Trinidad and Joppy, but the long-delayed jump from middleweight means that he does far less picking of spots and far more throwing of shots – though as the Wright fight showed, those shots don’t necessarily have the same impact that they used to.

That doesn’t deter Hopkins. He executed, taking a unanimous decision over Wright. And the loss won’t deter Wright from continuing on either. Hopkins voiced his hopes of possibly taking on 168-pound champion Joe Calzaghe. Wright wants to return to 160, and he is once again calling out De La Hoya.

Back to the waiting game – and the weighting game.

The 10 Count

1.  Hopkins, who was favored Saturday on the three scorecards of Glen Hamada, Dave Moretti and Glenn Trowbridge, will now turn his attention to the five voting members of the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

Hopkins is facing a fine and/or suspension for the fracas at last week’s pre-fight weigh-in, a confrontation that may have increased pay-per-view buyrates since it was aired live on ESPNEWS. After both men stepped on the scales, they stepped up to each other for the usual photo-op stare down. But trash talking led to Hopkins putting his hand to Wright’s face and shoving him back, a move that, unlike this month’s Fernando Vargas-Ricardo Mayorga press conference, fortunately ended with neither man being scuffed up.

2.  On the Hopkins-Wright undercard, Jorge Linares captured the World Boxing Council’s interim featherweight belt with a 10th-round stoppage of former 122-pound titlist Oscar Larios.

With the win, Linares became the mandatory challenger to WBC king Injin Chi, who was set to defend against Larios on the May 26 edition of “Boxing After Dark” until a hand injury suffered in training camp forced Chi to the sideline. Matchmakers substituted Linares in, but the televised card ended up being postponed when another hand injury took Joan Guzman out of his co-feature bout with Michael Katsidis.

Chi-Linares, should it come off, could be quite the box office draw, pitting Linares, a Venezuelan who has spent nearly all of his career fighting in Japan, against Chi, a South Korean warrior who may be entering his final years in the sport.

3.  The aforementioned Katsidis fought on the same Las Vegas card, scoring a 12-round unanimous decision over Czar Amonsot.

Katsidis was half of one of this year’s better fights, trading knockdowns with Graham Earl in February en route to a fifth-round technical knockout victory. By going to war with Amonsot on this past weekend’s Hopkins-Wright pay-per-view undercard, Katsidis may well have earned himself a shot at the winner of October’s Juan Diaz-Julio Diaz lightweight unification bout. Or, at the very least, a spot on a future “Boxing After Dark” broadcast, assuming that the oft-criticized franchise doesn’t keep handing out dates like this Saturday’s showdown between young cult favorite upstarts Carlos Baldomir and Vernon Forrest.

4.  Both Larios and Amonsot, unfortunately, were hospitalized after their bouts due to what Keith Kizer, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, said were minor subdural hematomas, according to ESPN.com scribe Dan Rafael. The brain bleeds mean that both men, who at press time were being treated at Valley Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas, will no longer be able to fight in Nevada, a rule that will effectively end their careers unless they unwisely choose to box on outside of the United States.

5.  Longtime flyweight champion Pongsaklek Wonjongkam was dethroned last week, losing via unanimous decision to Daisuke Naito.

Wonjongkam, who had successfully defended the WBC belt 17 times, had of late been criticized for not facing top challengers Jorge Arce and Vic Darchinyan and instead meeting up regularly with lower-ranked and overmatched opponents. Arce became Wonjongkam’s mandatory in March 2005, but the Thai fighter pulled out of their highly anticipated bout. In the meantime, Arce picked up the sanctioning body’s interim title, defending it four times over a 20-month period in which Wonjongkam had six fights, including four title defenses of his own.

Arce has since gone up to junior bantamweight and lost, and Darchinyan was the victim of a phenomenal knockout earlier this month. In Naito, Wonjongkam had a foe who he had defeated twice previously, once via first-round knockout in April 2002 and once more via technical decision in October 2005. Naito prevailed in his third attempt, however, a win that completes the changing of the 112-pound guard.

6.  Despite the potential for some intriguing unification bouts, it seems as if the division’s international nature means that a majority of the fights will be heard about but not seen on much of the world’s airwaves.

Half of the titlists – Naito and Takefumi Sakata – fight out of Japan, as does contender Koki Kameda, while Nonito Donaire and Omar Narvaez call America and Argentina their respective homes. Donaire’s Filipino heritage raises the possibility of him traveling overseas for an all-Asian superfight, but it is rather doubtful that a Showtime or an HBO would either venture across the Pacific or purchase domestic broadcast rights.

7.  Boxers Behaving Badly, part one: Former welterweight titlist Ike Quartey is being investigated by Ghanaian authorities on charges that he allegedly assaulted his wife, according to Ghana’s Daily Guide (by way of BoxingScene’s own Mark Vester).

Quartey, who recently announced a return to the 147-pound weight class, initially denied allegations that he had left his wife hospitalized July 13 with a bruised face and a bleeding toe, but he later admitted to hurting his wife’s toe with his designer boots.

Quartey is currently free on his own recognizance.
    
8.  Boxers Behaving Badly, part two: Heavyweight ham-and-egger Chancy Welliver was found guilty last week of fourth-degree assault stemming from an April 2006 incident in Spokane, Wash., in which an altercation ended with a man suffering a broken eye socket, nose and eardrum, according to The Spokesman-Review (via BoxRec.com).         

Welliver, who was also found not guilty of felony assault charges, faces a sentence ranging from no jail time to a year in prison.

9.  World Boxing Organization cruiserweight beltholder Enzo Maccarinelli retained his title on Saturday by outpointing former titlist Wayne Braithwaite by wide gaps on all three judges’ tallies. Braithwaite was the first of Maccarinelli’s defenses to go the distance – bouts against Mark Hobson and Bobby Gunn didn’t even make it out of the opening stanza.

Maccarinelli’s top two ranked challengers, Marco Huck and David Haye, are positioned to fight cruiserweight titlist Steve Cunningham and champion Jean-Marc Mormeck, respectively. As Braithwaite, ranked third, was Maccarinelli’s top available challenger, the Welshman is free to make a voluntary defense while waiting for his shot at the top of the 200-pound division.

10.  Former junior bantamweight contender Luis Bolano failed to make weight for the second time in three fights last week, tipping the scales for his bout against junior lightweight Monty Meza-Clay at 17 pounds over the limit.

No idea why the matchmaker signed up Bolano in the first place – in November, Bolano failed to make 130 pounds for a fight against Elio Rojas, coming in six pounds overweight.

Coming soon: Bolano’s heavyweight debut.

David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com