Tuesday, March 30, 2010 | 10 p.m.
Prefight: Hopkins vs Jones Jr.
The first time Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. fought, Jones won the IBF middleweight title by unanimous decision. Seventeen years later, the two meet again in the ring.
When Roy Jones Jr. suffered a first-round TKO loss at the hands of Danny Green in December, there were some who believed it no longer made sense for him to take on the still highly dangerous Bernard Hopkins in 2010.
Among those with that line of thinking was Hopkins's head trainer, Naazim Richardson.
"I didn't think the fight (Hopkins vs. Jones) was going to happen," Richardson said. "I picked Danny Green by knockout, so I didn't think it was going to happen. Then when (the knockout) came to terms, I really didn't think it was going to go on."
But despite the quick loss to Green — which has become somewhat controversial after Jones's camp complained Green used illegal hand-wrapping procedures — Hopkins still saw value in fighting Jones, whom he lost to in 1993.
And even though his own trainer didn't agree with him, Hopkins made his stance clear — he wanted to fight Roy Jones Jr.
"He said, 'I'm going to fight Roy Jones,'" Richardson said. "And I was like, 'Why?' I'm telling people, and I told Bernard, I would not take this fight.
"But I support Bernard. He's the man who put in all this work all those years, and if a man like him hasn't earned the right to pick a fight that he wants to fight, who has in this sport?"
With rumors of bad ticket sales and limited fan interest leading up to Saturday's main event at the Mandalay Bay Events Center, it's become clear this fight possibly is more for the fighters than for the public.
For Jones (54-6, 40 KO), it's a (possibly) final chance to prove he still can compete at the highest level in the sport he once stood at the top of.
For Hopkins (50-5-1, 32 KO), it's a chance to beat the guy who ruined his first world title shot 17 years ago.
"To me, in 17 years you learn to get immune to it. It doesn't get my blood pressure up high or anything like that," Hopkins said. "But that's because I'm a true veteran and I'm not trying to waste energy answering questions on whether I like him or not in the days before the fight.
"When you've been around the game, everything is controlled until that bell rings. But around Friday after the weigh-in, you'll start to see it bubbling up."
After losing to Jones in 1993, Hopkins went on to win a middleweight world title and successfully defend it 20 times, the most in boxing history.
He took out the likes of Glen Johnson, Felix Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya, Antonio Tarver, Winky Wright and Kelly Pavlik.
He got past the disappointment of losing his first shot at a world title.
But then the opportunity finally came to make a rematch that fell apart so many times in the past because of conflicts over financial splits and suddenly the loss became something Hopkins needed to vindicate before the end of his career.
"Bernard had really come to terms with the Roy Jones fight," Richardson said. "He really found peace in the fact that two of the guys that destroyed Roy (Tarver and Johnson), he destroyed them. So he was comfortable that, 'I can retire knowing that I put it to bed.'
"Then when the talk came up about it and started to line up, he went back into the fight and he was interested in it."
So, 17 years and 71 combined fights later, Hopkins will get his chance to write not only the final chapter to his rivalry with Jones but possibly also to his opponent's storied career.
If Hopkins does send Jones into retirement Saturday night, he says his emotions will be exactly how Jones' probably were in 1993 — no remorse.
"I've been brought up kind of different," Hopkins said. "Where I come from, I don't love my enemy. When you conquer your enemy based on him trying to conquer you, I can't have love for you. If you don't like me, I don't like you.
"If you try to do something to me and your gun jams and now you're asking me for mercy, not because you changed your mind but because your tools didn't work, I got to kill you right there. I got to lay you in the ground."
Brett Okamoto can be reached at 948-7817 or [email protected]. Also follow him on twitter: LVSunFighting.
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