Comments Thread For: Bernard Hopkins Exits the Only Way

[The plunger man]

Hopkins the racist got poleaxed and was chewing on concrete lol

[robbyheartbaby]

One of the greatest of all time, father time catches up with everyone though and 51 is getting old even for the great legend Hopkins. What a career what a pleasure watching him fight. One fight too many but one is better than many. X

[jwalkr]

The perpetually overrated Hopkins. Best wins against lighter opponents- Trinidad, Pavlik, De La Hoya. He was no Hagler or Monzon. He will be remembered for one thing & one thing only: "I will never lose to a white person."

[BoxingFan82]

As a long-time fan of Bernard's who was sitting ringside for this fight, I'll admit: this isn't the way that I wanted to see him leave the sport. I was shocked, but I'm not as disappointed as I thought I would be. As this article alludes to, Bernard is such a compelling fighter and person precisely because he isn't perfect and never has been.

For those armchair critics who are basking in Bernard's loss, I quote Teddy Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Most of us will never defy the odds the way Bernard has. Hell, it's a small miracle that he even became a professional boxer in the first place. At the same time, most of us will never know what it's like to take on the type of challenges Bernard took on and to come up short. But that's not Bernard's loss, that's ours.

Boxing, and the world in general, is better because there are men and women who have an uncommon confidence and audacity that motivates them to take risks that most of us aren't willing to, even when they don't need to, and we should celebrate their successes as well as their failures.

Last night, Bernard Hopkins entered the ring as The Executioner. He left it as a human being. An amazing one.

Thanks for all the memories Bernard.