by Geoffrey Ciani – Last week’s 105th edition of On the Ropes Boxing Radio featured an exclusive interview with former undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins (51-5-2, 32 KOs), who is coming off a controversial draw against WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (26-1-1, 16 KOs ). Had Hopkins been awarded the victory as most observers believe he deserved, he would have become the oldest boxer in history to win a major world title. Boxing fans are already eager to see a Pascal-Hopkins rematch early next year. Hopkins spoke about the fight and expressed his interest in an immediate rematch amongst other things in the interview. Here is a complete transcript.
JENNA J: Anyway, it’s actually time for our last guest of this year’s final show. He is one of boxing’s living legends coming off an amazing performance this past weekend. We’re proud to welcome back Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins. How’s everything going tonight Bernard?
BERNARD HOPKINS: Everything is great.
JENNA: I really have to congratulate you. I thought you performed above and beyond for a man of your age or any age the way you fought against Pascal, so I definitely have to congratulate you for that.
HOPKINS: Well first, I appreciate what you said and I also appreciate the love that I got, especially after a win even though I didn’t get it from the judges. Canada and the referee from Canada and the judges from Canada set a bad precedent of honesty and integrity amongst the boxing world. But I feel like a champion today because I am, and the love and the respect that I’m getting right now—this is a blessing in disguise. I mean one thing I understand in this long career and life, not only in my personal travels and of course you know about those, but this is a blessing beyond blessings. It’s the best thing that could have happened. Yes, would I have loved to have the belts right now in my presence knowing that I deserved it and I won it? Yes, absolutely, but when you look at the scheme of things, and I don’t want to get religious and fanatic on you, but guys who pay attention will see what he’s doing. I expose what I’ve always said many times about a sport that I love. There are things in this sport that would make corporate America never embrace, it would make casual boxing fans always have that taste in their mouth that boxing is still living in the 1950s and 60s where even though things are dressed up different and handled different, that somewhere down the line that the mafia of this world and the corporation of today’s world still exists high and well.
I can walk around with my head so high. With Pascal you can look at the fight and you look at the tape, before the decision was rendered I had my hands up walking proudly knowing that I won this fight and he had his hands down and his head to the canvas in shame. If pictures could speak a thousand words you can see a guilty face and you can see a face along with the evidence who’s winning and who’s losing. I’ve been doing interviews the last 48-72 hours. I’m heading to ESPN-Europe tomorrow, not my request by their request. This is the best thing for me and my struggle and my life and what I stand for, and with the position in a bad economy my stock has risen and gone through the roof. Thank you Canada, thank you judges, thank you referee, and thank you Canada. I wouldn’t have gotten this love and that’s what I’m getting, not sympathy. I would never have gotten this if I knocked Pascal out. I would have never got this with any injustice that I’ve been dealing with in my whole career with the corruption of boxing. This is part of what my struggles have been. What better person could be the poster boy for that than me?
JENNA: Bernard, you fought a little bit differently than we’re accustomed to seeing from you. Can you tell us why you chose to fight Pascal the way you did?
HOPKINS: I admit I fought out of character, and what I mean by that is it wasn’t safety first and you all watched my career. I mean that’s why I had a long career, because I didn’t fight like that my whole career. That doesn’t mean I’m not a Hall of Famer because I’ve been a Hall of Famer. What I wanted to prove is that I had a lot riding in this fight and I was written off at the end of the Roy Jones fight and I wanted to show you all that I still have greatness in me. When I say it, then it comes off kind of brag-docious and when I say it becomes kind of cocky, so I’d rather for others to say it but I’m going to tell you. I’ll say it with honesty and I’ll say it with sincerity—I’m cut from a different cloth. I’m not of this world of boxers today. Not that they’re bad, not that they’re not tough, but I’m from the old school. I’m from the old school of boxing. Remember all the old school teachers I had—the Bouie Fishers, the Nazim Richardsons even though he’s not too far older than I am. I mean in prison I had a lot of old trainers and I just say to everyone, and it’s like I’m pleasing with people to understand—enjoy me while I’m here! I’m not Muhammad Ali. He had his era. You got to enjoy guys that are around, and not that you are doing this, but people got to stop complaining how long I can do it and when I’m going to look old. Fine, that’s good talk every now and then but to harp on it and you don’t even see a sign or if you see a sign, the bottom line is what people had seen Saturday, forget the injustice. What people had seen, people are not crazy.
People don’t give people credit for not knowing. I know they know. What they had seen Saturday was something that’s not heard of in any sport—any! The great, and one of my biggest athlete stars that I’ve watched since he was with the Green Bay Packers called his retirement and his name is Brett Favre. How many people can do this? Even Evil Kenevil broke a hundred and something bones. How many people can do this on this level? You got to remember I’m not a George Foreman or a heavyweight fighter where I can stand there in one spot and just bang a guy. I got to have reflexes. I got to have my ring savvy. I got to have some kind of punching power to get respect. I got to have all of the things that a small man’s got to do in a light heavyweight body and still be on top of my game fighting guys that are 19, 20, and 25 years younger than me ya’ll. Again, I’m not saying you all are doing this. I’m just speaking in general. I won’t be denied. I can’t be denied, and anybody that tries to do that they are my biggest motivators. I wouldn’t be here without them. I wouldn’t be here without half of the media. I wouldn’t be here without the doubters. I thrive off that. Being the underdog and going to Canada, I’ll go to Africa to fight if I got to fight there. If that’s what I got to do I don’t care. That’s my style. That’s my heart. I don’t care. I survived death. I survived the penitentiary. I survived the mean streets of Philadelphia. Who do I fear?—another guy like me! That’s who I fear! I fear if I run in the ring and I run into another guy like me, because I know my life would be over, because I’d know what this guy is thinking and I’d know what he’s been through. To fight another me, carbon copy, A to Z—I’m afraid of that. That’s who I’m afraid of. My biggest fear is to run into a guy who’s got the same mentality that I got.
JENNA: Well Bernard, you certainly are a special fighter and one that’s often underappreciated for the things he’s done in boxing.
HOPKINS: I thank you for saying that. I wish there was somebody else that would say the same thing I said this passionately, but nobody is going to say it and nobody is going to represent me better than me. So unfortunately for some reason, or fortunately, I have to be the one to say it because I’m passionate about it because I believe what I’m saying. I trained my ass off for this fight. I trained my ass off, no short cuts. I never take them. I was in the bed early, up early, and this was like every day for nine weeks. I left my family, I left the dog, I was answering no phones, and everybody was saying I had an attitude. I wasn’t mean, but I wasn’t laughing, I wasn’t joking—some people took offense to that. I was on my game. Look at my face through the whole fight. Forget the playing and sticking out my tongue and all that. That was part of the showbiz and that was the hype of the moment, but in over 90% of that fight look at my demeanor. Pascal is bigger than me. He’s definitely stronger than me. He’s younger than me. There is no way in the world that I was supposed to be able to handle that at 45 years old. What I did is just expose Pascal and ruin the Chad Dawson and Pascal fight because TV isn’t going to want to buy that mess. You have two losers fighting each other. For what?
JENNA: Yeah, I mean there is nothing on the line any more. No one wants to see that fight. We talked to Jean, and he said, “You know what? I don’t want Dawson. I don’t want to fight him again. I beat him handily. I want Bernard Hopkins”. He said he’ll even fight you in America.
HOPKINS: Let’s go! And I want you all at ringside. I mean I do care, not to the point where I hold it against you. I mean I know who you are. That’s the fight that you got to see. That’s the biggest fight in 2011 and the only thing I can tell you is I’m going to try even harder whether I’m in the States or I’m at Niagara Falls on the New York side. I’m going to put on a performance. You all think that last one was something? I’m going to reach in the bag again because I still have something to fight for and I’m blessed to have the things that I always wanted, but there is something else in me that makes me want even more. I love what I do and when I leave this game, which can be any fight from now, and you know that. I’m going to be 46 in about twenty days. When I leave this game I will leave a profound effect on my legacy where it will never be forgotten. It will never be downplayed. It will never be something where somebody can say, oh well, no, no, no. No! I did something that’s going to be almost impossible to break—twenty-one defenses. I’m setting the bar so high that you got to go to orbit to catch it.
GEOFFREY CIANI: Bernard, one thing I wanted to ask you about, I read the boxing message boards. You’ve had a lot of critics over the years who say you have a boring style or this, that, and the other thing because you have a technical style where you fight very tactically. But after this fight you are, you said it before, you’re getting more love and praise than I’ve ever seen in all of my years. Since boxing internet existed, I have never seen you getting the kind of praise you are now. How does it feel to be getting that type of recognition after that type of performance which as you yourself described was out of character?
HOPKINS: I feel great, man, I feel great. That people, especially my harshest critics, are giving me that respect, I mean I have respect but I know what you mean and you’re right. I felt that whatever fight it took to get it, it’s good to feel appreciated. I hear my friends who’ve been married for a long time out here. I hear women and I know that they feel like they aren’t appreciated at home. I know now what they mean and to feel appreciated, it isn’t about money, man. Trust me God knows it isn’t about this. When you feel that you work hard and you come home and your kids run to you and your wife grabs you and hugs you and they’re glad that you put a roof over their heads and they just show you—not tell you—that they appreciate you. That’s a hell of a feeling, man.
Listen, I’m not blowing smoke. In Canada, after that fight was over with people grabbed me, they hugged me. They’re Canadians, man. They grabbed me. They hugged me. It’s not their fault. They didn’t do anything. They respect the warrior. They respect my guts. They start hollering Bernard Hopkins! This is unusual to happen during a fight, but they start hollering Bernard Hopkins! They stopped saying Pascal’s name and started hollering mine! We’re in Canada! It reminded me of the Tito Trinidad fight when I was in New York City. It was all “Tito! Tito! Tito!” and around the eighth round or the seventh round they start saying, “B-Hop! B-Hop! B-Hop!” They root for the other guy when they see something special. They’re going to root for you and that’s what they did in Canada. Why should they? Go to your DVR and go to your tape and watch it. I mean Canada with the adopted Canadian son and they’re hollering, “B-Hop! B-Hop! B-Hop!” It was thousands of people. I’m not saying it was the whole 16,000 people, but the other people that weren’t saying anything were so shocked and quiet looking at the fight that they were silenced. And I’m glad that I’m getting the due respect that I think I wasn’t getting from the media. Especially that and I won’t mention names, but top media guys that have been around said I was born again.
My fights are not always exciting so I understand based on that, but I’m a technical fighter and I was told by the old school to hit and not get hit. I know we live in a blood and guts society today and I know that the UFC has raised the bar for a certain type of blood and guts that people want to see. I’m a fighter who wants to be able to go to school tomorrow to my daughter’s Christmas party and not embarrass her when her teacher says to me, “Bernard, good fight” and I say “Thanks” and she doesn’t even know what I’m saying. I am sorry ya’ll if I have to do that, but if I got to show my moxie, if I got to show my guts, if I got to show my heart, if I got to show my determination, and in spite of the fact I don’t have to do it anymore on this level, then somewhere in your brain and your mind and your soul you got to say, you know what—this guy is a multimillionaire. We heard that he’s safe with everything he does. He must love this to fight the way he did Saturday. I mean do I got to kill somebody in the ring for people to say, “You know what, B-Hop I might not like you with the hood, I might not like how you fought all the time, I might not like how you said certain things at certain fights that were disrespectful, but you damn sure have guts”, and that’s what I want my tombstone to say other than my name.
JENNA: If Pascal doesn’t want to have a rematch, are there any legal avenues you can pursue to try and get him back in the ring?
HOPKINS: If somehow it doesn’t happen or whatever, Richard Schaefer has already been on it, letters have already been sent out from my lawyers, Golden Boy lawyers. My promotional company is stepping in and at the end of the day maybe we sue the WBC and we go after them and make them make some kind of judgment to strip him from the WBC title and do what we got to do from there and I’ll move on, because I’m going to be the oldest champion beating George Foreman’s record. I’ll just have to be 46 instead of 45, but it’s definitely going to happen. So either way, Pascal has to go around with his head down. He has an ego. He’s young and if he needs to clean up his name he has to fight Bernard Hopkins again. I mean it’s basically really plain and simple. I’m not trying to be sarcastic but it is what it is. I know if a 45 year old man or anybody beat my ass like that in my home town and I couldn’t get a victory, they don’t have to tell me once or twice who I’m fighting. I don’t give a damn whether I’m fighting Chad Dawson or not, I got to get Bernard Hopkins because I am not satisfied with my win. He couldn’t say I was dirty. He couldn’t say I did anything wrong. All of the things that he tried to do to paint a picture that I was this guy who did all this stuff that nobody noticed, especially the referee. You didn’t see none of that from B-Hop, so trust me it’s going to get interesting over the days. It’s going to get very interesting. I had a long conversation with Richard Schaefer the CEO. I had a long conversation with Oscar De La Hoya. It might get ugly. It might get ugly. Unfortunately, fans don’t care about that nonsense but my interests have to be protected and the injustice had to be brought to the light. If I make a lot of noise about something you didn’t think should be made into a big issue can you imagine how much firepower they gave me now?
JENNA: When we talked to Pascal earlier in the show, he said that you should stop acting like a baby and that you’re a 45 year old man and you should stop crying. What do you have to say to those comments?
HOPKINS: Well he’s supposed to do that, because what he’s doing now is taking orders from his masters. So you got to take orders now and try and go across the strip now but people aren’t buying that. I mean his brother, and his family members, and his wife, and his kids probably buy it. You know what I mean? They got to be biased to him, but at the end of the day they are going to tell him what to say because he’s not a guy who thinks for himself. When he walks around Canada like he’s the big shit like most Canadians told me, and they tell him look you didn’t beat Bernard Hopkins. Any athlete that’s got to hear that and knows that’s the truth. They know that he had his head down with his body language. You had all seen the tape. You had all seen his reaction. You had all seen the body language. You know he lost. I mean come on. All this Monday morning quarterbacking stuff and all the stuff like this and all that. If you asked Pascal why his demeanor was like that, if after the twelve rounds, why were you like that? Why didn’t you look like a winner? I’m curious about that. I mean Jim Grey slammed him. Oh! Jim Grey asked him and said I think you lost it tell me why you think you didn’t lose it. I mean Pascal was just so amateurish and so stupid! What he said was crazy. I mean he exposed himself. He said, “Bernard’s a dirty fighter”. I never got warned one time. He got warned eleven times and they never took a point!
JENNA: How much do you think Pascal’s stock has dropped since his controversial draw with you?
HOPKINS: Hey listen, his stock just crashed like the housing market. That’s a good quote. His stock just crashed. Listen, he got beat up by a 45 year old man who’s soon to be 46 in less than twenty days. I mean how do you recover from that? I don’t care what kind of publicist you got. How do you recover? You were telling people they didn’t see you running from me? That didn’t see you gasping for air? They didn’t see you not trying to fight? How are you going to tell people they didn’t see what they had seen? Golden Boy and Oscar, we’re not stopping. Trust me. Even though this is the Christmas thing, but the great thing about this is I’ve got my promoter’s hat on. I’m on ESPN doing my job for the first month of the year in January. We’ve got the holidays and guess what? It’s like reading a book. People don’t remember the first fight of the year. They remember the last fight of the year, and I was told today we’d be a candidate for maybe ‘Fight of the Year’ or maybe ‘Round of the Year’. Maybe it was the twelfth?
I don’t know, but at the end of the day the last fight of the year which did the highest viewership on Showtime. I’m giving y’all the scoop that you probably already know. I got it today from Richard Shaffer. Showtime had their highest ratings in the last three years. Wow! That means that a lot of American people could have seen it on free TV and whoever paid for it over there in Canada and abroad got a chance to see maybe the blockbuster pay-per-view fight of 2011—Bernard Hopkins and Pascal, not Pascal and Bernard Hopkins. I don’t give a damn if he comes in with the belts or not. This is the highest viewership of Showtime by the sports vice president, the new guy since Jay Larkin passed God rest his soul. I was told to pass it on by Richard Schaefer. I’m glad I stayed on with you long enough because I almost forgot. I think you need to know that.
CIANI: That is something to hear on those numbers there, but one of the other things I definitely wanted to get your views on—I think it was the end of the sixth round where Nazim told you to go to the body with both hands and in that seventh round you must have landed more than a dozen really brutal body shots. It was a body attack that I have never quite seen you administer that I can remember off the top of my head. What was that like and how much do you think you took out of him with that?
HOPKINS: I took a lot out of him then because he started running back and he didn’t fight effectively. He didn’t throw a punch the rest of the round, but I tell you I did throw those punches. I’m bald-headed now and I had hair then. I was known for body shots when I was fighting at super middleweight and when I started coming down from 170 to campaign as a middleweight. I must say I kind of abandoned that style a little bit because the head shots with my boxing ability, I sort of got I guess drunk with that. So now I went back and I trained for the body shots and I trained for that because I realized the body breaks everything down. The last time I focused on the body like that was when I fought Oscar De La Hoya, which was the last person I knocked out with a body shot.
I wanted to at least slow Pascal up because he’s younger and he’s stronger. So if I beat the body up knowing I’d have to sacrifice my eyes and my head which is swollen right now, but I knew I got a great chin. I know I can withstand anything that he does. Even if I got my ass knocked down, I’m getting my ass up and that’s what it was, man. That’s my honest straight answer to you is that we practiced that. With my sparring partners I practiced that. I stopped throwing body shots in the gym. They still came. They fought and they got better as the weeks go by because Nazim stayed in their corner and I had Danny Davis, the chief second in my corner where I had to go ahead and outsmart and outthink Nazim because Nazim was in my opponents’ corner. That’s how we trained for seven weeks man. Nazim knows me better than me and Nazim was teaching them how to beat me. Some days I had it good; some days I didn’t. I’m going to be honest with you. I stopped three of my sparring partners with body shots where they couldn’t continue and they took the next guy in and took the other guy out and they gave him a break until the next day.
JENNA: You mentioned he was a younger fighter and a stronger fighter and in the first round I thought that knockdown was behind your head, but in the third round he did knock you down and it did look legit. Were you at all hurt at any point?
HOPKINS: Yes, it was a flash knockdown. When I got up, I was cool. I was fine, and as you know I fought on that whole round. I didn’t run. I didn’t try to buy time. I didn’t try to avoid more punches. I still did what I had to do. I think I even still tried to press the guy. But yeah, it was a knockdown. It was a legitimate one, but the first one was in the back of the head. I think that’s one of the things my lawyers are protesting, because I got a point. Even though one judge scored it 10-9, so he didn’t even think it was a legitimate knockdown where it became such a thing that they knew it was a knockdown. I’m reflecting on the scorecards. That’s why I said that. I kept a copy of it. Forget the ones that were whited-out and all that stuff like that, but I do have that.
JENNA: After that knockdown you seemed to take control of the fight. What adjustments did you make that allowed you to have more success as the bout went on?
HOPKINS: Really the adjustment was to keep pressing and to know that if I got to get knocked down again I’m going to get up and just keep pressing and keep pressing. There was no adjustment. He would throw wild shots and hit me in the back in the head with me either trying to spin or move. It was just a situation that happens. It really was a situation where Pascal threw a punch, whether it was intentional or unintentional, it hit, I fell towards the ropes, popped up, and the referee didn’t know whether he was going to give me a count. Then he counted, because I looked at the tape and he looked confused for a second and then he wound up counting. But there wasn’t any adjustment because the adjustment was I’m going to still keep pressuring the guy. I mean it’s not like I came in and started dancing around on him and tried to do anything else. I just said I’m going to keep punching him, because I knew he was going to get tired and I knew that if I continued to bang him to the body he was going to get weaker and I was going to tire him earlier.
So that was my focus. It was real simple. It was to press, press, and make him fight. They think I’m old. They think they’re going to press me. I do the opposite of what they think they’re going to do to me. Instead, he’s boxing. He’s trying to run from me. They had a big ring. I found out through Golden Boy that the contract was only for a ring the size of such and such. They made the ring the biggest ring they could get so he could run. So maybe I could use my legs and chase him. I got strong legs. I found out a lot of stuff today. The phone’s been busy. I found out a lot of things today that Golden Boy Promotions put in writing through legal counsel That’s why I can say this stuff without backing up. I’m not flapping off at the mouth. All of this stuff is documented. You can get if you want it. Call Golden Boy and tell them you talked to me. It’s a problem. It’s a major problem jumping off and it’s going to be serious. Pascal isn’t going to be able to show his face in any arena without getting booed or looking like a fraud by claiming he’s something that he’s not. I can live with that. My career didn’t end Saturday. They said it was going to end Saturday. They said they were going to put the old man in a rocking chair.
JENNA: Now you mentioned that this could get ugly. It could be a long legal bout. Are you at all worried that it will keep you on the shelf trying to get a rematch with Pascal?
HOPKINS: No, because at the end of the day I could do what I got to do and still contest that based on that. There is no gag order that I can’t do anything. I don’t have a situation where I got an obligation to an X-Y-Z fighter. I can fight Cloud in the next three months if I want to, but I don’t want to fight Cloud. Not because I don’t think I can beat Cloud, the fight is with the fight that I believe I should have the championship bout is with Pascal. Trust me, I can go about my business and leave the scene and let him off the hook, but I’m not going to do that because I’m not about letting injustices that I stood up for in boxing go away. I’m going hound them. I’m going to be like a stalker.
JENNA: Bernard, do you think that’s at all the case? That they want you to go away? They did that with George Foreman. They did with Evander Holyfield. Those were two fights were they should have won those bouts against Shannon Briggs and Valuev. Do you think they are at all doing that with you?
HOPKINS: Well if they are doing that, then I’m going to make them say it and really expose themselves. So I don’t know what people have on their minds. I don’t know what people think or what people do. I can come up with my theory, but at the end of the day I can’t control what people do or people say, but I can control how I handle it and I can control how I respond to it and to me that is more powerful. See because at times I won’t talk to anybody on the phone this long, but there is a time to talk and a time to not. As long as nothing is said that I know isn’t true and as long as nothing is said that is going to hurt me in terms of strategy, I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t do that. So all that you’re hearing, I’m hoping it goes somewhere and I’m saying to you right now whatever they wanted Bernard Hopkins to do, it didn’t happen. One thing that did happen was a lot of people got embarrassed Saturday night. Canada got embarrassed Saturday night. Unfortunately, the judges got embarrassed even though they exposed a lot of things about boxing that people have already been saying for decades and decades. Also I exposed another guy that they’re trying to build up as a champion and also I messed up the Chad Dawson and Pascal fight because who the hell wants to buy two fights where two guys lost and one of them lost to a senior citizen who’s almost 50 years old. Let’s do the math. That’s not a good promotion. I mean I can’t sell ice in Alaska in the winter. That’s a bad investment. I can sell ice in hot Africa.
CIANI: Bernard, how satisfied are you with your performance compared to your most recent big upset which would have been against Kelly Pavlik just over two years ago?
HOPKINS: I’m satisfied with this one more than the Kelly Pavlik fight because even in the Kelly Pavlik fight I didn’t knock him out, but why I’m satisfied with this fight more than I was satisfied with the Kelly Pavlik fight is because I was written off big-time. Not like I was written off when I fought Joe Calzaghe, but I was written off big time and even some of the people closer to me were asking if maybe it was time for me to leave. I took that a little personal and at the end of the day, not because they have their own opinions but because the way it was done. I understand and forgive some of those that don’t know. At the time and the place it takes something at this stage in my career to be motivated. The Pascal fight motivates me. The Roy Jones fight was a personal fight. You can never take fights personally. It’s business. Even though I overcame the fouls and the back of the head spot that people think now they can hit me back there that it’s a vulnerable spot. Look at how many times Pascal was warned and he never got a point taken. Look at the tape. And guess where the referee is from—Canada. Forget me, see, everything I’m saying is a lie. Deal with the fight, not what I said outside the fight. Look at the tape and then tell me if I’m telling the truth. People think I’m lying to them for a minute, and then they look at the tape and say that’s one. The referee warned him twice. I counted twelve, some people counted thirteen, some counted ten, and no one was under nine.
JENNA: What do you have to say to all the boxing fans out there that feel this is another black eye on boxing and they are a little turned off after watching you fighting a fight where you should have gotten a win and you didn’t?
HOPKINS: I would say that Canadian judges are not equipped and not ready to do big fights and judge big fights on this scale and this level in Canada. That doesn’t mean that Canada doesn’t have great fans. They do! They respect me and I respect them and I will always love, visit, and come back to Canada and see a lot of friends that I met over there and some that I already knew over there in Toronto. But Canada is not ready, the judges and referees are not ready for this level of boxing. At the end of the day they should just make a Canadian light heavyweight championship belt. They should make a Canadian middleweight belt because if their fighters don’t leave Canada, and with the American fighters from what I’ve heard, you got to go to Canada and knock a guy out to win. Even though someone will say Bernard but you got to come to the States to do that to win. Maybe that’s true in some cases, maybe it is.
Canada needs quality experienced, outsider neutral people to come in and handle fights of this magnitude. If I’m part of making that happen then I’ve done something whether I fight anybody from here on. But Canada showed Saturday blatantly to the world that if you go to Canada and you’re not from Canada, you’re not going to get a good deal and you’re not going to get a fair deal and Bernard Hopkins has exposed that. So I did start something I had no intentions of starting. I hate to say it’s sad for Canada right now, because Canada is now trying to build a dynasty of big fights in Canada—Bute, Pascal, the other little fighters that are coming up. People don’t want Bute to come out. Hey! The guy counted twenty times when Bute got knocked down. That was controversial. Oh, we’ll clean it up and do a rematch. That’s still hanging in the air, but then this one, an out and out? People give me from Canada, reporters said, “Bernard I had you winning eight rounds out of twelve”. Now I never went to college, but I know if a guy wins eight, with the knockdowns, eight rounds out of twelve—I’m glad the fans enjoyed the fight and good night!
JENNA: Well Bernard, we thank you very much for your time and we wish you all of the best of luck in the New Year.
HOPKINS: No problem. I hope the fans enjoyed the show if they’re listening to it live or whatever. Take care and have a happy holiday, and if you’re from Canada Happy New Year and God bless.
CIANI: Thanks Bernard, Merry Christmas.
HOPKINS: Thank you, man. Thank you!
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For those interested in listening to the Bernard Hopkins interview in its entirety, it begins approximately one hour and forty-one minutes into the program.
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To read the Jean Pascal interview from the same episode please CLICK HERE
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