The shocking facts of where Bernard Hopkins grew up

[Sweet Pea 50]

Like I have said before, I don't nothing about Philly. But I understand about once blue collar neighborhoods turning into bad places.
Where I'm from, Oak Park used to be a middle class neighborhood back in the day. But back in the late 80's and especially the 90's, due to crack and the big time Blood presence, you wouldn't want to roll through unless you knew somebody. It's getting better, but I see what some of you are saying.

[KingTito]

bernard hopkins still had it rough, regardless of where he's from.. he's a bad ass

[Orange Sneakers]

Bernard Hopkins tears off his T-shirt and points to the scar on the left side of his chest. "You see that? That's where the blade went in," he says. "Missed my heart by nothing. There's two more like that in my back, as well."

Hopkins is standing beside the ring at the Classic Kick Boxing gym here in Pasadena, California, where he has just spent the day honing his body and skills. On a wall by the entrance someone has pinned a simple message from Muhammad Ali

Champions aren't made in gyms," it reads. "Champions are made from something deep inside them."

Ali may have been talking about himself but the statement could equally apply to Hopkins.

In 20 days' time, the fighter who calls himself The Executioner will climb into the ring in Las Vegas to take on Britain's Joe Calzaghe. For both men it is a defining moment.

For Calzaghe, who flies out this week to his training camp in Nevada, it will be a huge test of his ability to step up from the super-middleweight division, where he reigns as world champion, to light-heavyweight and extend his extraordinary record of 44 wins in 44 fights.

But for Hopkins the fight is about something more than statistics. Impressive though his own record may be, with just four defeats in 54 bouts, every time Hopkins steps through the ropes he knows he is defying his own turbulent past.

And it is the memory of the life of violence and crime that he has left behind that leads Hopkins to believe that, no matter how impressive Calzaghe's record may be, come April 19 in Las Vegas there can be only one winner.

"I have no fear of losing because I have no fear of dying," says Hopkins. "In fact, I should already be dead. It's because I'm not that I've become the person I have. And that's very bad news for Joe Calzaghe."

Hopkins, like many a fighter in America, is a product of the mean streets. Born in North Philadelphia 43 years ago, by the age of 17 he was in prison, serving an 18-year sentence for robbery with violence.

Shortly before he entered the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Graterford, the state's largest maximum security prison, his brother, Michael, was murdered, shot in the back in their old neighbourhood.

In prison, Hopkins witnessed nightmare events which live with him to this day and continue to fuel his fire.

But he also educated himself and took up boxing again, having been a talented young amateur before falling foul of the law.

He won penitentiary titles and turned professional following his release on parole after serving four years and eight months of his sentence.

His return to the troubled neighbourhood where he grew up was traumatic. On three occasions, he was stabbed. But he had vowed never to return to prison and, instead of falling back into crime, he began a long and successful career in the fight game.

He is seven years older than Calzaghe, but if his physical shape commands attention, it is nothing compared to his strength of will.

"I am blessed that I didn't fall by the wayside like so many of my friends and family," says Hopkins. "But it was a closerun thing.

"It was challenging being inside the penitentiary. It was the toughest in the whole of the United States. I saw extortion. I saw ****. I saw a guy hang himself.

"I saw an inmate kill another. I watched a man go crazy. I was just 17, 18, but I'll tell you something; it was harder when I was released than it ever was inside jail.

"People didn't want to know. I was a convicted felon and unemployable. It would have been so easy to have returned to my bad old ways. I still had the reputation. I could have carried on beating people up and taking what was theirs.

"I could have turned to the heroin and ******* that was rampant in North Philadelphia. It was a violent society. And that's why I got stabbed three times. On one of those occasions, I lay in a hospital bed for 30 days with all kinds of tubes sticking out of me.

"The stabbing in my chest somehow missed my heart but only just. It got me thinking. Why was I still alive when my brother was dead? Why was I still breathing when so many of my friends had stopped?

"Then I realised I could never return to Graterford. I had a choice, like we all have, no matter how hard a hand we've been dealt. I chose life, and boxing enabled me to find it."

But if boxing enabled Hopkins to build a decent life, it is also true that his experience of the worst side of life informs his approach to his sport.

"Ninety-nine per cent of boxers, and that includes Joe Calzaghe, have not had to overcome what I have," he says.

"So, when it gets to the sixth round, or the eighth, or the ninth, when you have to dig deep into your soul, if you've never been required to do it like I have, you can't. Joe may have achieved what he's achieved but he won't be prepared for someone like me. That's not talk. That's a fact."

Hopkins makes no apologies for the person he becomes when the bell sounds for the start of each fight. "My past becomes my present," he says. "It takes me to a very dark place. But I've learned how to leave that man in the ring. I can return home to my wife and daughter as the guy you're talking to now. If I didn't, I wouldn't be alive today.

"But let's not dance around this matter. I have a licence to kill Joe Calzaghe. Not only that, I get paid millions for doing so. I'm not saying that's what I want to do but it happens. Joe holds that same licence. This is not something I take lightly, it's what we've both chosen to do."

If the image shocks, then it has to be said that Hopkins is no stranger to controversy.

Shortly after Ricky Hatton's defeat by Floyd Mayweather last December, Hopkins faced Calzaghe and told him: "I ain't never gonna lose to a white boy."

The reaction was one of outrage at was seen as a racial slur, but Hopkins insists he is not a racist and his remark was intended to test Calzaghe's reaction.

"I wanted to test the pulse," says Hopkins. "I knew it would get under his skin and it did. I smell fear in people that others can't because of where I've come from. Everyone knows I'm not a racist. Most of my team are white, and that includes my coach."

Hopkins claims he feels no pressing need to justify the words he used. "What I said was a social comment," he says. "Where I come from, in the North Philly projects, in the State Penitentiary, and especially in the boxing rings, I never saw a white face. So it's unacceptable to me that a white guy can defeat me after where I've had to drag myself up from."

He says he does not expect Calzaghe to hurt him but the question remains as to why a man of 43, with world titles to his name, would want to carry on fighting.

"It's a good question," he muses. "I've got 30 million dollars in the bank, a wife of 16 years and an eight-year-old daughter. Why would I want to put myself through all this punishment, even risk my life, to do what I've done so many times before? You would think that I don't need to do it.

"But there are always mountains to climb. You've always got something to prove, to yourself, to the doubters, to those who look down at you and to those who never gave you a chance.

"But above all else it allows that person who still lives in a very dark place to rear his head every so often in the ring, to do what he has to do and to get out again. I've been keeping him in check now for 21 years, just releasing him when I have to, and when it's legal.

"This is what Joe doesn't understand because there's no way he would. I have no personal problem with the man. He's probably a nice guy, if a little emotional. I'll just be doing my job. And pretty soon after the first bell sounds, Joe's gonna realise he's got one hell of a fight on his hands.

"Whatever Joe Calzaghe throws at me in the ring, it's nothing compared with what I've faced up to and managed to overcome in life. That's why there's only one ending to this story. You know it, I know it and, deep down, so does Joe Calzaghe."

[MikeBrew328]

Bernard now will not win because he's not from the streets, I guess.

He just went to prison numerous times, he didn't grow up on rough streets though!

And the streets where Bill Cosby grew up were not impoverished but they definitely were not the most luxurious place.

[Run]

As a Philly native I didn't need to do any demographic research, but I did it anyway.

Germantown is one of the more peaceful and affluent neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Bill Cosby is from there as well, as was Sun Ra. White collar workers outnumber blue collar workers by about 9/2. The median income is over $40,000/ year.

Crime rates are some of the lowest in the city.

I didn't grow up in the roughest "hood" either, but even I grew up in a tougher Philly neighborhood than Hopkins did, with higher crime rates and lower median income. So I can't help but laugh when he refers to his tough background: he's a middle class kid! Sure he went to prison, but anyone can do that.

He's built a false image on being "street." But it's not him. Sorry if you thought he would be too "street" for Calzaghe or anyone else, but you have the wrong guy.



Click this link for details:

http://homes.point2.com/Neighborhood...ographics.aspx

He WAS the criminal element.

lol there's no "myth" here. He used to strong arm rob people on the street.



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[Run]

This is like the final scene in "Eight Mile," when the phony suburban gangsta gets exposed. Except this is a true story.

It makes little sense . . . why does he want so badly to be street?

I don't care if he grew up in the Trump Taj Majal................played tennis........and was a male cheerleader.

He's a bad mother ****er who is intimidating and used to strong arm rob people on the street. He like I stated IS THE CRIMINAL ELEMENT.

He is as street as anyone else is. LOL.



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[!! Shawn]

Like I have said before, I don't nothing about Philly. But I understand about once blue collar neighborhoods turning into bad places.
Where I'm from, Oak Park used to be a middle class neighborhood back in the day. But back in the late 80's and especially the 90's, due to crack and the big time Blood presence, you wouldn't want to roll through unless you knew somebody. It's getting better, but I see what some of you are saying.

German Town has NEVER and I mean NEVER been a bad place. It is old money and manor houses.

[STEELHEAD]

German Town has NEVER and I mean NEVER been a bad place. It is old money and manor houses.

and your posts and avatar lends me to assume your a punk **** wad who wouldnt know a bad place decades ago .

[Sweet Pea 50]

German Town has NEVER and I mean NEVER been a bad place. It is old money and manor houses.

Like I've said, I don't know Philly, so I'll take your word for it.
But regardless, none of us on this board would want to see B-Hop in a street fight. I can tell you that much.
I'm not basing my pick on his "street cred". I'm not discounting Calzaghe's chances of winning. I think B-Hop can throw a mean lead right, and make it ugly enough to make it close going into the later rounds.
Just my observations. I've been wrong before.

[2501]

regardless of whether this is true or not, most american boxers who come from "the streets" or had hard lives really dont compare to some of the boxers who come from other countries such as Edison Miranda who is a product of Colombian streets. Streets of which according to him, he was abandoned in and even forced to eat road kill. Kasim Ouma as we know, has had an incredibley hard life. Even Rafa Marquez, as he became a successful boxer, was kidnapped at gunpoint from his driveway and forced to withdraw a large sum of money from his bank in order to save his life.