Hopkins wants to beat Dawson to clear his name

THERE ARE some comments not apt to be received kindly. Telling the statuesque supermodel who weighs 115 pounds, but used to weigh 110, that she's looking a bit chunky qualifies. So does suggesting to the MIT professor he can't be all that smart because he finally got a complex mathematical equation wrong.

For a boxer, the ultimate insult is to be told he quit in the ring or faked an injury so as to avoid taking a beatdown. As great as he was, some believe Roberto Duran's legacy is forever tainted by his actions in his second of three matchups with Sugar Ray Leonard, when Duran, in the middle of the eighth round, turned his back on Leonard, shook his right glove and supposedly told referee Octavio Meyran "No mas."

So, with a body of highly commendable work that in many ways rivals that of Duran, WBC light-heavyweight titlist Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KOs) understandably takes offense when anyone says he didn't really hurt his left shoulder in the second round of his Oct. 15 bout with challenger Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KOs) in Los Angeles' Staples Center.

Dawson, who was initially awarded a technical-knockout victory when Hopkins was unable or unwilling to continue - the outcome later was changed on appeal to a no-contest by the California State Athletic Commission - has depicted the seemingly ageless North Philadelphian as a coward desperately seeking to avoid his inevitable fate.

More than a few fight fans share, or at least give consideration to, the negative image of B-Hop forwarded by the Dawson camp.

All of which makes Hopkins-Dawson II, on April 28 in Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall, one of the more important matchups of the 47-year-old Hopkins' legendary career. Oh, sure, he can produce documentation that his injury - a dislocation of the joint that connects the collarbone to the shoulder blade - was legitimate. He could authorize his surgeon to provide medical details as to the severity of the damage done when Dawson lifted Hopkins into the air and tossed him to the canvas. He could swear until he's blue in the face that it would have been madness for him to attempt to continue fighting for 10 1/2 more rounds with a left arm made useless by a seemingly deliberate foul.

But Hopkins knows the only way to prove the skeptics wrong is to fling their allegations back into their faces. To do that he must enter the ring against the younger, stronger and favored Dawson, then reach back in time to dial up still another of his classic performances that always seem to shock the boxing world.

So, were the derogatory comments made by Dawson and his supporters additional fuel for Hopkins' internal fire?

"It's not as motivating to me as it was earlier," Hopkins said from his preferred training camp in Miami Beach, Fla., where he has prepared for several of his signature victories. "How many times have people been out-and-out wrong in what they think was going to happen to me? Even being doubted becomes old after a while.

"No, my motivation now is that my talent, age aside, surpasses Chad Dawson's. I have to prove that. I'm not out to show I'm better than someone my age is supposed to be, but I'm just better than this guy, period.

"I'm from Philadelphia. Yeah, I talk a lot, but my credibility will be in shambles if I don't back up what I say."

Hopkins has reached the enviable and increasingly tricky stage of his professional life at which he must continuously manufacture more impressive miracles to amaze the public, and satisfy himself. There really is no one else, in any sport, to whom he can be compared, which raises the bar he must attempt to clear ever higher.

He was 36, an age when most fighters are or soon will be on the downhill side of their careers, when he dominated Felix Trinidad and stopped him in the 12th round to fully unify the middleweight championship on Sept. 29, 2001. He was 41 when he tuned up Antonio Tarver on June 10, 2006, to win the light-heavyweight crown, following a 10-year reign at middleweight, and he was 43 when he exposed 26-year-old middleweight titlist Kelly Pavlik in a catchweight bout on Oct. 18, 2008.

Hopkins actually did "retire" for a few months after he pummeled Tarver, but the persistent lure to outdo himself - as well as to cash more seven-figure paychecks - keeps drawing him back in. But when will enough finally be enough? When he is knocked out for the first time? Or when there are no more high-wire escapes to be made?

Archie Moore and George Foreman both were champions in their mid-40s, but even those pugilistic rarities weren't widely considered top 10 pound-for-pound talents in their dotage. In the May 2012 issue of The Ring magazine, a poll of boxing experts has B-Hop 11th among all fighters, and several of the voters had him as high as No. 7.

In the recent past, Hopkins has compared himself to NFL quarterback Brett Favre, but now, with Favre apparently retired to stay, he stands alone. And don't even try to mention former Phillies lefthander Jamie Moyer, who has earned a spot in the Colorado Rockies' starting rotation at 49.

"He's on the team, but he ain't no Cy Young candidate," Hopkins said, his hackles raised that such an analogy would even be considered.

For Hopkins, irritating his doubters always has meant nearly as much as rewarding his fans. And with the number of the former rivaling and perhaps even surpassing those in the latter category, he is prepared to do battle not only with Dawson, but with that most relentless of foes, Father Time, as well as shadowy forces he is convinced are forever conspiring to see him fall.

"I've learned to survive in the game of subterfuge and deceit," Hopkins said of his out-of-the-ring battles with promoters and television executives whom he claims are eager to see him driven from boxing. "I know the score. They want me on the ground, like Mike Tyson [vs. Buster Douglas], looking for my mouthpiece. But I'm not that easy to get rid of.

"I'm very calculating in everything I do. I've been that way since I got out of the penitentiary. Before I was incarcerated, I was loosey-goosey. Wherever the wind blew, I was there. Things are different now."

They're different because Hopkins doesn't believe there is any would-be jailer in his immediate future who holds the key to his fate. He has a "gut feeling" and an "intuition" that Dawson won't be the one to stick him in the cage of retirement. Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer thinks so, too; he already has begun preliminary discussions about arranging Hopkins' next title defense, a unification bout with Wales' Nathan Cleverly, 25, in the fall, probably somewhere in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, Cleverly (24-0, 11 KOs) defends his WBO 175-pound belt against Robin Krasniqi (37-2, 13 KOs) on the same night Hopkins again takes on Dawson.

"If everything goes well, I would very much like to make that fight," Schaefer said of Hopkins-Cleverly. "I've talked to Bernard about Nathan and he said, 'Look, I'm used to fighting younger guys. Just keep bringing them on.' "