Bernard ‘The Executioner’ Hopkins says he’s interested in coming out of retirement for a third fight against Roy Jones Jr. He says they’re both knotted up at 1-1 with a victory apiece between them, and he’d like to break that tie by beating Roy again.
Hopkins isn’t saying whether he expects his trilogy match against Jones Jr to be sold on pay-per-view or not, but it wouldn’t be a shock if that’s what he has in mind.
Jones is coming out of retirement on September 12 to face 54-year-old Mike Tyson in a match in the heavyweight division on pay-per-view. The fight is expected to make a lot of money. Just how much Jones gets is unclear.
Hopkins and Jones have fought twice already
Jones (66-9, 47 KOs) and Hopkins fought in 1993 and a second time in 2010. Roy won the first fight between them in 1993 by a 12 round decision, and Bernard came out on top in their rematch in 2010.
Hopkins (55-8-2, 32 KOs) was much better preserved than Jones when the two fought their rematch ten years ago. B-Hop dominated Jones in that fight, but that’s not surprising. Jones came into the contest with Hopkins having been knocked out in the first round by Danny Green in 2009.
“If I were to get in the ring again, it would be to settle, even though we met many times in circles, fights, and boxing, I think you know where I’m going,” said Hopkins to Fighthub on wanting a third fight with Roy Jones Jr.
“He won one in 93, and I avenged myself 16+ years later or 14+ years later. If I had a choice, the only critical question is what weight it would be? It would be Roy Jones because we’re 1 and 1.
“He got the first one; I wouldn’t say in the prime of my career. I’d say the opening of the door of the future Hall of Famers, and then we became that. In 1993, everyone knew that Roy was the Olympian, and should have got the gold. I believe that too.
“He should have got the gold. I come from another place another way to get to where we both actually wound up, but our travels were different,” Hopkins said about him and Roy Jones.
It’s hard to take Hopkins seriously when he talks of wanting to settle a score with the 51-year-old Jones, as he already beat him soundly in their rematch in 2010.
The third fight between Roy and Hopkins will be viewed as a cash grab for the two fighters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHd47-lwmMk&t=78s
“Ali and Frazier fought three times. So there’s been a third ‘settle the score fight.’ It could be an event,” said Bernard. “Those rivalries in our sport, we don’t need five rivalries. Mickey Ward and Gatti.
Three Ward’s, right? Things like that happen. I don’t think we’re [Jones and Hopkins] are going to get in a war because we don’t fight that way, but we are slower.
Anything among two old men can become a war because reflexes aren’t what they used to be. Mentally you think you can do what you did when you were 20 or 30. So that makes us vulnerable even more.
“The same thing with heavyweights, old-timers legends,” said Hopkins.
You can’t compare Jones vs. Hopkins 3 as the same thing as Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraizer fighting three times.