In the yawning silence of Big Bear Lake, Bernard Hopkins begins his war.
"Lemme ask you a question," Hopkins roars over phone. "Who do you think won that fight?"
Don’t be fooled. That wasn’t a question. Bernard Hopkins isn’t a man of questions. He doesn't ask them, he doesn’t answer them. Hopkins makes statements. Big, bold emphatic statements
that carry you from one point to the next like a bicycle being dragged by a freight train.
Nothing about his split decision loss to Jermain Taylor July 16 is a question to Hopkins. Not the decision. Not the fact that he lost the final round on judge Duane Ford’s card despite landing 12 meaningful punches to Taylor's five. Hopkins knew The System was coming for him and he gave it all the chance it needed.
"I'm looking forward to rectifying the system’s mistake, to defeating Jermain Taylor again," Hopkins says, defiance dripping from his voice. "I can live with the decision because I know in my mind I won. This time, Jermaine Taylor must be executed, he must go to sleep. I don’t know any fighter ever won a decision after being knocked out."
Make no mistake, Hopkins doesn’t want revenge. Revenge implies a loss.
Hopkins wants a reckoning.
He doesn’t want to beat Jermain Taylor, he wants to embarrass him. He doesn’t just want to show the judges up, he wants to beat The System and rub its nose in it like a misbehaving puppy.
"You have no idea how adamant I am to destroy him, to destroy The System… It's a personal war with me," Hopkins says. “In the NFL, they’ve got the [guts] to review a play and say it’s not a touchdown. This is the only sport where we both know the sky is blue and some dude says the sky is pink and we have to accept it… Independently, I have to rectify the problem.”
Bernard Hopkins doesn’t trust you. Fifty-six months at Graterford State Penitentary outside Philadelphia taught him that you can’t be trusted. Hopkins makes no excuses for his time in jail, he blames no one but himself. When he got out early for good behavior, he turned his life around and became one of the great – if unheralded – role models in sports. When he was a kid, he stole guys’ jewelry for fun. He grew up to take their belts for a living. But he never forgot that no one looks out for you like yourself.
He lives life like a man with a bounty on his head, the kind of man who looks both ways and above and below before crossing the street.
"Bernard has always been an anti-establishment guy,” boxing historian Bert Sugar says. “It probably comes from the time he spent in prison. He trusts no one, not his own manager, promoter… He has turned down money, easy money, because offered by someone he didn’t trust at the moment."
When he fought Antwun Echols in 2000, he dislocated his right shoulder when Echols slammed him to the canvas. The referee instructed Hopkins that he could win the match because of the intentional foul. But Hopkins knew The System would’ve gotten him somehow. He got up off the deck and beat Echols into the kind of mess you’d cringe at on the bottom of your shoe.
When he lost to Taylor, they took his belts. But that doesn't change Bernard Hopkins.
Belts are for show. Champions don’t need any decorations.
"This is my 21st title defense, there’s no question in my mind about that,” Hopkins says. “I’m going as B-Hop, the people’s champ. Jermain Taylor thinks I have to take his title. Why does he think that? He didn’t take it."
Hopkins won't talk about his strategy for the rematch, only to say that he’ll keep the pressure on. The challenger for the first time in over a decade and just six weeks from 41, the age which he promised his late mother he’d stop boxing, there are no questions for Hopkins, just one truth he promises to bring to life: “I will put Jermain Taylor to sleep.”
There won’t be any decisions for The System to make, he says, no waiting for Taylor to falter. Fighting Hopkins isn’t a matter of standing toe-to-toe with a boxer, it's a matter of holding up under pressure as he sucks the air out from around you, hoping you can gasp long enough to stay on your feet.
That's when you face the humbling truth that Bernard Hopkins is better than you.
In the opposite corner, Jermain Taylor waits on the truth, the air already getting thinner.
