Tweet
Fear brings out the worst in us.
Bernard Hopkins has always been known to bend the rules a little when inside the ring with someone who’s faster or more technically skilled. He’s built a Hall of Fame-worthy middleweight career out of not just punching and slipping punches but also clutching and grabbing and butting heads and swinging elbows, whatever it takes to win. Now that he’s making his living not just as a fighter but as a fight promoter too, when he sees someone reaching for dollars he believes rightfully belong in his pocket, Hopkins is more inclined than ever to throw a low blow.
That’s exactly what he did this week when he joined the ever louder and ever more off-key chorus of boxing guys who are attacking mixed martial arts, which for its part has done nothing at all to the sweet science except take over as the world’s most popular combat sport.
But while Floyd Mayweather ridiculed MMA fighters as “white boys who couldn’t cut it in boxing” and Bob Arum characterized the sport’s fans as “skinhead white guys,” Hopkins has opted not to play the race card. This is surprising, considering what “The Executioner” proclaimed last year shortly before being lethally injected with Joe Calzaghe punches for 12 rounds: “I ain’t ever gonna lose to a white boy.” Good for Bernard and his evolution beyond racism, you say? Not so fast. Hopkins didn’t exactly take the high road in assessing MMA. He took the ****phobic gutter.
“I don’t want to watch two grown men wrestling with panties on,” Hopkins told BoxingScene.com. “I’m from the hood. We don’t play that. To me, I’m not buying a ticket to watch two grown men with panties on, sweating, [with] nuts in their face. That’s not me. To compare that to boxing is ludicrous. It’s a ****o. It’s an entertainment ****o. I’m not wrestling a guy with panties on and his nuts in my face.”
Bernard’s decision to steer clear of the MMA cage is born not simply out of disdain but out of fear. There’s a phobia at work here that’s buried deep beneath the tough-guy ****phobia. In part it’s a money-related fear, as boxing finds it more difficult than ever to sustain itself on a few pay-per-view megafights each year, while the UFC rakes in the dough with buzz-creating PPV events every few weeks. But even more deeply rooted than the economics is boxers’ fear of no longer being the toughest guys on the block.
Bernard Hopkins wants the world to know that he’s not about to set foot in a cage with some MMA guy and his sweaty nuts, and he wants you to think it’s because those panty wearers are ******s and he’s not. But the real reason Hopkins isn’t about to put on his macho boxing trunks and take on a mixed martial artist is that he knows exactly how that fight would end. “They’d whoop my ass, all of them,” Bernard said on a national radio show a couple of years ago when asked about MMA fighters. “Their worst guy would whoop my ass.”
Hopkins is a tough guy, though, and a guy who loves a challenge (especially a challenge with a lot of dollar signs attached), so don’t discount the possibility that Bernard might one day take on a carefully chosen MMA fighter, knowing full well that in exchange for getting his ass kicked he’ll get to pocket some of those beloved greenbacks that keep drifting away from the boxing ring and into that octagonal cage he so fears.
red - “They’d whoop my ass, all of them. Their worst guy would whoop my ass. Don’t get me wrong, I’d try, but I haven’t fought like that since prison or when I was a kid.”
-Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins on The Jim Rome Show describing his chances against any one of today’s MMA fighters.
http://thefastertimes.com/mma/2009/1...simply-afraid/
Bernard Hopkins has always been known to bend the rules a little when inside the ring with someone who’s faster or more technically skilled. He’s built a Hall of Fame-worthy middleweight career out of not just punching and slipping punches but also clutching and grabbing and butting heads and swinging elbows, whatever it takes to win. Now that he’s making his living not just as a fighter but as a fight promoter too, when he sees someone reaching for dollars he believes rightfully belong in his pocket, Hopkins is more inclined than ever to throw a low blow.
That’s exactly what he did this week when he joined the ever louder and ever more off-key chorus of boxing guys who are attacking mixed martial arts, which for its part has done nothing at all to the sweet science except take over as the world’s most popular combat sport.
But while Floyd Mayweather ridiculed MMA fighters as “white boys who couldn’t cut it in boxing” and Bob Arum characterized the sport’s fans as “skinhead white guys,” Hopkins has opted not to play the race card. This is surprising, considering what “The Executioner” proclaimed last year shortly before being lethally injected with Joe Calzaghe punches for 12 rounds: “I ain’t ever gonna lose to a white boy.” Good for Bernard and his evolution beyond racism, you say? Not so fast. Hopkins didn’t exactly take the high road in assessing MMA. He took the ****phobic gutter.
“I don’t want to watch two grown men wrestling with panties on,” Hopkins told BoxingScene.com. “I’m from the hood. We don’t play that. To me, I’m not buying a ticket to watch two grown men with panties on, sweating, [with] nuts in their face. That’s not me. To compare that to boxing is ludicrous. It’s a ****o. It’s an entertainment ****o. I’m not wrestling a guy with panties on and his nuts in my face.”
Bernard’s decision to steer clear of the MMA cage is born not simply out of disdain but out of fear. There’s a phobia at work here that’s buried deep beneath the tough-guy ****phobia. In part it’s a money-related fear, as boxing finds it more difficult than ever to sustain itself on a few pay-per-view megafights each year, while the UFC rakes in the dough with buzz-creating PPV events every few weeks. But even more deeply rooted than the economics is boxers’ fear of no longer being the toughest guys on the block.
Bernard Hopkins wants the world to know that he’s not about to set foot in a cage with some MMA guy and his sweaty nuts, and he wants you to think it’s because those panty wearers are ******s and he’s not. But the real reason Hopkins isn’t about to put on his macho boxing trunks and take on a mixed martial artist is that he knows exactly how that fight would end. “They’d whoop my ass, all of them,” Bernard said on a national radio show a couple of years ago when asked about MMA fighters. “Their worst guy would whoop my ass.”
Hopkins is a tough guy, though, and a guy who loves a challenge (especially a challenge with a lot of dollar signs attached), so don’t discount the possibility that Bernard might one day take on a carefully chosen MMA fighter, knowing full well that in exchange for getting his ass kicked he’ll get to pocket some of those beloved greenbacks that keep drifting away from the boxing ring and into that octagonal cage he so fears.
red - “They’d whoop my ass, all of them. Their worst guy would whoop my ass. Don’t get me wrong, I’d try, but I haven’t fought like that since prison or when I was a kid.”
-Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins on The Jim Rome Show describing his chances against any one of today’s MMA fighters.
http://thefastertimes.com/mma/2009/1...simply-afraid/
Comment