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 Bernard Hopkins: Part Two – The CEO
 The Glassjaw Chronicles by Thomas Gerbasi
(August 2, 2004) Photo © HoganPhotos.com
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UPPER DARBY, PA – Get Bernard Hopkins talking about the business of boxing, and you can just sit back and move out of the way. The undisputed middleweight champion gets a fiery look in his eye – a look usually saved for his opponents – and becomes a preacher, not a pugilist. It’s his worldview that is fascinating – skewed, sometimes – but fascinating nonetheless. Yet when he brings up the topic of his family, his voice growls louder – protective even – as it’s obvious that he’s willing to do anything to keep that unit intact.
Needless to say, that leads to a question.
"I know that leads to a question," quips Hopkins as he gets his hands wrapped at the PAL gym by trainer Bouie Fisher. "I saw your ears wiggling."
So why would Hopkins try to keep his family away from the business that has made him a wealthy man?
"I made a conscious effort to keep my family away from this business because to me the boxing business is just as bad as the drug business," said Hopkins. "And to have a business where people act worse then drug dealers, I don’t want my family - and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want your family, I’m pretty sure Mr. Fisher wouldn’t want his family - around drug dealers, even if you have to work in their midst. I said that to be as graphic as I could, and that’s why I used those terms."
You don’t see Jeanette Hopkins around the perimeter of the fight game like some spouses. You don’t see Hopkins parading his five-year-old daughter Latrice around in front of the boxing world either.
"I’ve been married 11 years out of a 14-year relationship and you rarely see her," said Hopkins. "The only time you’ll see her is at a fight, and she don’t holler, scream, or jump up. You might have sat next to her and never known that. How many fighters can you say – and I’m not saying they’re bad people – kept their family away like I’ve kept mine away?"
Not many. It may come from the lessons learned in Graterford State Penitentiary, where you don’t give out too much information about yourself because that can come back to haunt you. A few years back I remember interviewing a fighter who was an ex-con, and he made it a point to ask me not to include the name of his wife in the article. "I just got out and I don’t need anyone back there to know how to get to me," the fighter said.
But just because Jeanette Hopkins is out of the spotlight, that doesn’t mean she’s a shrinking violet, as Hopkins points out, "she knows more about boxing than you think because we run our own business. She handles all the E-mails, she knows all about the lawsuits."
Ah, the lawsuits. At certain points in his career, it appeared that Hopkins was splitting his time between the ring and the courtroom. And the list of heavyweights Hopkins has battled in legal terms rivals that of his in the ring opponents. From his legal wars with Butch Lewis to America Presents to Lou DiBella, Hopkins has become a fighter either loved or hated by those in the industry. There is no middle ground. And for all his rantings, you can say this about Hopkins - he believes passionately in what he does outside the ring, and he will shoot himself in the foot over a principle if he thinks he’s right.
"I ain’t as crazy as people think I am," says Hopkins.
Some would beg to differ, but in a world of followers, Hopkins has made his own path outside the ring. And as ludicrous as some of his decisions may have appeared, in some strange way it has all worked out for the best, because on September 18, Hopkins will make the biggest purse of his career in the biggest fight of his career against Oscar De La Hoya. In a symbolic way, Hopkins, who has fought the industry for years, now has the opportunity to knock off the man who represented it for the last decade.
"What I’ve done is looked at history," said Hopkins. "And then I looked at myself - that I was born with something that everybody ain’t born with – my heart, to stand up – not a heart beating – but a heart to stand up, and balls to stand up, and courage to stand up, knowing that you can risk big paydays. I’ve been criticized for turning down monies that most thought that it was crazy for me not to take certain things. But now, as we fast forward, I am not fighting a heavyweight, which is Roy Jones. I’m fighting a middleweight, junior middleweight, welterweight, or whatever, and I’m making three times more of the money."
Sounds like a master plan coming to fruition, but it wasn’t always big paydays, pay-per-view fights, and appearances not only in boxing magazines, but also in mainstream publications like Vibe and King. There were hard times, all made harder by the fact that Hopkins still had to perform in the ring to keep afloat in a sport where his mouth was rapidly making him enemies.
He made little money for his first world title fight, the battle against Roy Jones Jr. for the vacant IBF middleweight crown in 1993, and that led Hopkins to court to break away from promoter Butch Lewis – which he did successfully.
"It’s easy for me to stand up because that’s me," said Hopkins. "There are times when I took my last earned money and went to court and fought Butch Lewis and won because the contract was a bad thing."
Next was a war against America Presents, which sued Hopkins in 2000, with the Philly native filing a counter suit against the promoter. The case ended in a hung jury, and Hopkins escaped from America Presents.
He also testified in front of the US Senate to discuss boxing reform, and suddenly, the ex-con was a trying to pave the way for a new generation of boxers. The boxers responded.
"Everywhere I go, it’s ‘thanks for standing up for us, man,’" said Hopkins. "I heard that way before I became undisputed. They are just afraid because it takes that special individual to come up and say, ‘I know I’m risking my career. I know I’m risking getting blackballed.’ Because you can get blackballed in boxing easier than in any sport in America. But that shows Bernard Hopkins’ character, man. I didn’t have a million dollars. I didn’t have three belts. And I stood up then. That’s why no one can say that I’ve changed. You can say anything about Bernard Hopkins – I might agree with you, I might not – but one thing you can’t say is that Bernard Hopkins started talking more when he won the undisputed middleweight championship. You can’t say that I was a quiet, humble guy before September 29, 2001."
"Would you agree with that Mr. Fisher?" Hopkins asks his longtime trainer.
Bouie smiles, not raising his glance from the task at hand.
"I will agree wholeheartedly," said Fisher. "Wholeheartedly."
But in any war, there are casualties. After Hopkins won the undisputed middleweight title in 2001 by stopping Felix Trinidad, "The Executioner" imploded, turning down lucrative fights with Jones and James Toney, nixing a three-fight deal with Showtime, and losing a libel case to then-advisor Lou DiBella, a case that cost Hopkins $610,000 and smudged his reputation as someone you could actually do a handshake deal with in the dirtiest of businesses.
Nobody expected Bouie Fisher to be the biggest casualty of all.
"You know what the low point was?" asks Hopkins. "The low point was, out of all that - even though it had to do with boxing, but it didn’t have to do with the people in boxing - it affected my team and they didn’t see my vision; they didn’t see that these people were doing this to hurt everybody. What really affected me was when we went through the thing with Bouie and his sons. Because if I’m not getting the money, and I’ve got to fight lawsuits – Bouie never got a lawsuit against him, James never got a lawsuit against him. I stood up and fought and took a stand that I believed in. He agreed that it was a stand that I should have took – at least that’s what he told me – and everybody else agreed, but that don’t change what’s happening to me. So if I’ve got to fight, then I’ve got to fight with money. And if I’ve got to fight with money, you ain’t gonna get what you think you gotta get. I can’t get what I gotta get. And everybody else can’t get what they gotta get. Why? If I’ve gotta fight on my own and still pay you money, then you’re not in this fight with me. That was the lowest point – when I got sued by them. It’s just happened to be Lou’s lawyer, Judd Burstein. So maybe at the time he was the only lawyer in New York, or maybe it was a conspiracy, or else I’ve just got bad luck."
The lawsuit filed by Fisher against Hopkins (over contractual and money issues) left a bad taste in the mouths of practically everyone in the boxing business. Bouie was a father figure to Hopkins and a key to his success. Even for boxing, this was a bad one. Jeanette Hopkins shed her share of tears.
"She was more devastated about our breakup and what was going on than anybody," said Hopkins of his wife’s reaction to the split with Bouie. "She cried like a baby and that’s the first time I ever seen it. She said, ‘I know what you did.’ But we let that go, because we don’t run down the hill. You walk down."
More on that hill later, but at the time Bouie Fisher filed suit against Hopkins, it appeared to all that the thinking man’s champion, the maverick, had outthought himself, had made one move on the chess board too many, and was now stuck in a corner with no way out. And while some call it paranoia, Hopkins saw it as another road to cross, and another lesson learned.
"See, I’m so vocal, I used to let people know, because that’s my realness about me," said Hopkins. "If you done me wrong, I’ll warn you and I’ll tell you, and they’ll wind up locking the door the next day. And I’ll say, damn, how’s the door locked? If I think about it, I did something that they don’t do. I’ve said what was in my heart because you expect people to say that. But instead they held it in and then I learned to do that. I’ve learned how to camouflage what I think. Before, I was quick to tell you I don’t like you. To me, that’s real though. Would you want somebody around you that’s fine until something happens, and then they say, ‘you know, I never liked that motherf**ker anyway.’ And you say to yourself, I never knew that. Why? Because he never showed me any signs that there was a problem. Out of all things that happened in boxing, that (the case with Fisher) was the only thing, because I knew that all I went through from that was geared to make that happen, and they won that particular time. They wanted that interference; they wanted that conflict within my camp – within my home. If they could get to my wife, they’d get to my wife. If they can get to my wife, they need to separate me from those belts."
Hopkins and Fisher eventually reconciled without going to court, and Bouie was back after Sloan Harrison manned the corner for the champion’s March 2003 defense against Morrade Hakkar – another fight for which Hopkins drew ridicule as the fighter that threw away the winning lottery ticket.
He tells a story.
"There’s four cows at the end and I’m on the mountain," said Hopkins. "I could do two things: I could storm down there because I’m excited and this is the chance to go down there and get ‘em, or I can go ahead and walk down there. In the end, I’m gonna have the last word. And I’m gonna have it. Why run down there when you can walk down there and F’ all of them? But if you run down there, you know what happens when they see you running down the hill? They’ll scatter. So you tiptoe down there."
Slowly but surely, Hopkins became relevant again. The lawsuits were a thing of the past, and in today’s ‘here today, forgotten tomorrow’ world, they were yesterday’s news. So Hopkins kept winning, beating William Joppy in December of last year, and people again started to warm to "The Executioner" as a fighter, hoping that a marquee matchup could be made to showcase him or expose him against one of the best in the world. That doesn’t mean the 39-year-old lost his edge though – or his bitterness.
"What they tried to do to me is fine," said Hopkins. "We can’t control him. We threw everything at him. We’ve got to mess his credibility up because we know he’s not gonna stop talking; we know he’s not gonna stop expressing his feelings. We know he lives by what he believes is right. So if we attack his credibility, then it will go on deaf ears. So I had to counter back in my plan. Their plan – our plan, and we’ll let God make the final decision on whose plan works. I had to counteract that, and how do you do that? I had to keep winning. I had to keep my title because that’s 75% of the leverage, because even if you don’t want to interview me, even if you don’t want to listen to me, I am the undisputed middleweight champion of the world. Some are forced to do interviews. Some are forced by their boss to come and see me and ask for the interview. That hurts some, not all, because they have to humble themselves, especially when you realize that you’re that puppet on a string for a higher being that you put in a position as your God because I understand that your electric bill needs to be paid."
But as if a ray of light has emerged from the clouds of conspiracy theories and industry-based rants, Hopkins mentions his motivation, which comes in great part from negativity. It’s his fuel.
"Motivation can come in all shapes and forms with me,’ he admits. "If I go outside and all my tires are slashed, that’s motivation. When things run smoothly, somebody has to break a glass; somebody has to do something. Some people need bumps in the road to make things happen. It don’t always have to be downright dirty, ignorant stuff; it just has to be some type of motivation. In boxing I’ll never have a problem being motivated because there’s always something in boxing, whether it’s on my end – to be fair – or somebody else’s end. There’s always some motivation that will be brought to me, or some adversity will be brought to me."
He even goes as far as to say that one of his motivations to not lose to De La Hoya is because he doesn’t want to be fighting, at 39, on an ESPN or Fox Sports Net – a ludicrous thought, but hey, whatever works.
"I’ve always been one fight from being close to the hall of fame status, the elite superstar fighters, and one fight out of boxing, if I lose," he said. "A lot of that has to do with – now that I’m 39 – I wouldn’t want to be on ESPN anymore. Not that I have anything with ESPN or Fox TV. But with what I have accomplished out of the ring, I don’t think a lot of people will get ulcers or cry all day if Bernard Hopkins don’t come up with a win."
Does he really need that type of mental push, even if the thought seems far-fetched to the rest of us?
"I need all that," Hopkins admits. "In the way of motivation, certain things have been brought upon myself, or maybe in some cases I’ve interacted and made it to the point where I brought it upon myself. Either way, I am so used to having that motivation that brought me here, even when I knew I wasn’t fighting for the dollars that should have been there for certain fights – believe it or not I argued for more, I fought for more, I stood up for certain things – but at the end of the day I went and trained and fought for – as you have wrote less than two years ago – for less than $300,000, $200,000, for the same titles on purse bids. The William Joppy fight was what, $300,000, $250,000? Now it’s $10 million plus. But I still went in there and had that hunger. And there were still people asking me, ‘Bernard, are you motivated?’ ‘How can he get up for it?’ And there was nothing at the end of the rainbow. It wasn’t like Joppy and De La Hoya. It was Joppy, and where I go next? If I got up for that, and there’s no 10 million dollars on the table for the Joppy fight – it’s $310,000 gross, not purse; expenses come out of that – then yes, I am motivated."
Say what you want about Hopkins; he has stuck to his guns, right or wrong.
"That’s something that comes with being consistent, even when the hard times come," he said. "I think truly that outside of the athleticism – I’m lobbying for myself to say this – you’ve got people that fight on cancer - my mom died last year at 56 but she battled for three years – but any people that are battling disease or anything that’s adversity, it could be anything – losing their jobs, kids won’t speak to them or listen to them – but just take me as a poster boy. And I don’t mind being it; the city embraced me for it."
That it did. Last Friday, Hopkins was honored with his own day in Philadelphia, two days before he left for Miami to finish up his training for the De La Hoya bout. It was something inconceivable, not just 16 years ago, but maybe even in 2002. And now, a little more than a month away from the biggest fight of his career, Bernard Hopkins thinks not of just wins and losses, but of history.
"I want to see if you can relate to this – maybe not agree, but relate," said Hopkins. "Every century or decade, a person or persons, or an athlete, come across while we’re alive, and does something that’s not popular amongst the remaining athletes that’s in your era. You had Satchel Paige, Jim Brown, you had Bill Russell in the Boston Garden – who caught hell up there and he played for Boston - you had Muhammad Ali with the Vietcong quote. He was under fire, he was ridiculed, he was scorned, and he was executed basically, because he didn’t agree with the majority of people’s opinions of this country. And I say, forget his health, Ali’s in better shape than we think he is as far as his wit. Physical is one thing – he understands. But isn’t he the most recognizable athlete of all-time, and he did the opposite of what was politically correct? There’s only certain athletes – and you can’t match one history up or one century up with another; I’m not doing that – but when you look at me and my era – I can only speak for my era, (Marvin) Hagler can only speak for his era; I would never disrespect anybody’s era – but when I look at it, I look at it as the same type of fight of risking – in some cases, maybe your life, if your employment is based and predicated on you feeding your family – if I’m weak-minded, I can go back into the streets and rob, steal, sell drugs. If you’re weak-minded you can be forced by the powers that be to do something that they will sit back later on and say it was you who killed your own career when they might have played a role in you committing suicide in your own career."
But for every Paige, Brown, or Ali, there’s someone like Curt Flood, whose fights against the baseball establishment paved the way for the multi-million dollar salaries we see in the major leagues today. When Flood died in 1997, most of the media gave the former Cardinal centerfielder his due. Later that year, Pat Brady wrote, "In the last decade, Flood has moved from blasphemer to hero, from ingrate to pioneer, and from dupe to legend." Yet if you took a poll of major league baseball players today, most would probably not know who Flood was or why he is the reason most of them make such lavish salaries today.
Only history will tell where Hopkins will end up in the sociological history of sports. But in the meantime, listen to him. If you listen long enough, you might just say, ‘hey, this guy may be right after all.’
"I have warned everyone that my plan was to be patient, and to put myself in the position of being CEO, of being the manager," said Hopkins. "It’s a role that I take on where you must get criticized for decisions. And when you try to separate me from being what I put myself in a position to be, I can’t be free under the law of the land. If I say that I am EX Promotions, which I am, and I am manager, which I’ve been for five years, I am Bernard Hopkins Jr. Inc., my corporation in Delaware, if I can’t be legally under the same guidelines that any other corporate American person is, than why am I treated and criticized for making a CEO decision because I am head of them? I don’t work for them; they work for me. I have a payroll. So why is the establishment, 70% of them, finding it hard to separate the athlete from the businessman? Why haven’t they left that master’s mentality? It’s a good thing that I, as a promoter, can show that there’s more out there than the biting of ears, the fighting in the parking lot, the cursing at every press conference."
Click. The tape has run out. Bernard, you’re the first fighter to do that.
"It ain’t the first time it happened," he deadpans.
On September 18, Bernard Hopkins faces Oscar De La Hoya in the biggest fight of 2004. It’s been a year of upsets; could Hopkins be the next to fall? In Part Three, Hopkins on the De La Hoya fight and his fistic future.
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E-Mail Thomas Gerbasi at tgerbasi@mindspring.com
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