Tweet
By Keith Idec - The Nevada State Athletic Commission performed perhaps the toughest trick in boxing Friday afternoon, something opponents, publicists, reporters and miscellaneous adversaries have never done.
They made Bernard Hopkins keep his mouth shut. The motor-mouthed former middleweight champion feared further punishment in Las Vegas, so after the NSAC fined him $200,000 for his antics at a July 13 weigh-in for his points victory over Ronald "Winky" Wright, Hopkins declined to elaborate on his displeasure with the NSAC's ruling.
"No comment," Hopkins told the Las Vegas Review-Journal upon leaving a 40-minute hearing at the Grant Sawyer State Office Building. "If I say something, they may haul me back in that room."
Nevada's boxing regulators probably should've done just that. Because from the opposite side of the country, it looks like the frugal fighter from Philadelphia got off easy by losing $200,000, or six percent of his contracted purse of $3 million.
The NSAC originally withheld 10 percent of Hopkins' purse, an additional $100,000, following the aforementioned mini-melee. But Hopkins pocketed an undisclosed portion of the pay-per-view revenue, too, and the fight drew reasonably well domestically --- 305,000 buys, according to Mark Taffet, HBO Sports' senior vice president for pay-per-view and operations. And that doesn't include whatever additional profits Hopkins might've earned as a legitimate partner in Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions, the primary promoter of the Hopkins-Wright fight. [details]
They made Bernard Hopkins keep his mouth shut. The motor-mouthed former middleweight champion feared further punishment in Las Vegas, so after the NSAC fined him $200,000 for his antics at a July 13 weigh-in for his points victory over Ronald "Winky" Wright, Hopkins declined to elaborate on his displeasure with the NSAC's ruling.
"No comment," Hopkins told the Las Vegas Review-Journal upon leaving a 40-minute hearing at the Grant Sawyer State Office Building. "If I say something, they may haul me back in that room."
Nevada's boxing regulators probably should've done just that. Because from the opposite side of the country, it looks like the frugal fighter from Philadelphia got off easy by losing $200,000, or six percent of his contracted purse of $3 million.
The NSAC originally withheld 10 percent of Hopkins' purse, an additional $100,000, following the aforementioned mini-melee. But Hopkins pocketed an undisclosed portion of the pay-per-view revenue, too, and the fight drew reasonably well domestically --- 305,000 buys, according to Mark Taffet, HBO Sports' senior vice president for pay-per-view and operations. And that doesn't include whatever additional profits Hopkins might've earned as a legitimate partner in Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions, the primary promoter of the Hopkins-Wright fight. [details]
Comment