:deal And I love how some pasty ****** who has never even laced up a pair of gloves has the nerve to say "he tried to quit against Calzaghe" behind a keyboard when the replay clearly showed that he was hit low and despite the fact that he finished the fight. WTF is "trying to quit"? Quitting ain't all that hard to do to, so there is no trying to quit. He either did or didn't.
I went from simply wanting to see a good fight to wanting to see Hopkins knocked the **** out. Great pre-fight interview, Hops. Maybe I'm being too hard on the old *******, though. Sometimes I forget he's so old, Sonny Liston called him Pappy.
The race thing annoyed me slightly, but that's a card Hopkins played before- I'm not surprised he went back to that well to sell the fight. The Pavlik quote bothered me, legit. Even if we completely ignore the man being an alcoholic before the Hopkins fight, it's in poor form to take pride in ruining another fighter's life and making that your biggest accomplishment in the ring. Had Kovalev resorted to that and used Simakov's name in such a way, for example, I'd have shifted to cheering for a Hopkins knockout/schooling in a heartbeat.
Was he really taking "pride" or are you reading a bit much into this? In fairness, I didn't see footage of the quote in question, but I assume you refer to this: "And so I exposed it and I beat him easily after being a 6-to-1 underdog. And, matter of fact, it even went further. I ruined his life. I ruined his career." Factually speaking, aside from the 6:1 odds he noted (I thought it was 4:1 myself, or perhaps even 3:1 - but am not certain), everything he said was true, no? He did expose Pavlik. He did ruin Pavlik's career, and by extension, he at least derailed the life path Pavlik was undergoing. I don't think Bernard was necessarily taking pride in "ruining" Pavlik. What I'm reading is, if he's taking pride in anything, it's that he won that fight with such ease when everyone was counting him out and many expected a slaughter. Also keep in mind the entire context of how the interview started. Bernard, in this light, was being questioned point blank why he doesn't get the respect he probably deserves. Why his unbelievably amazing accomplishments haven't "transcended the sport". This all comes down to Hopkins never getting the credit he felt was his due (rightly or wrongly), and the Pavlik fight largely personifies that, at least to me, in the way the media was acting in the lead-up to that one, which is eerily similar to the lead-up in this one. You're a great poster Rock - one of the very few whose posts I try and make a point to read when I see your name as last post in a recent thread. But I strongly disagree with you here, and do not necessarily think Hopkins was exhibiting the type of spiteful pride you're suggesting. I see no strong evidence of it from the portions of the interview I did see in conjunction with the excerpt I read.
He was taking pride in it on some level otherwise he wouldn't have even mentioned the part about ruining his life. He's clearly trying to imply that he took him apart that badly in the ring that it ruined his life outside of it aswell, he's clearly proud of it IMO.
When Hopkins is asked to talk about his accomplishments, it's one thing to say he beat Pavlik in convincing fashion, it's something entirely different when you hear "I ruined his life". So condescending, the puffy chest attitude can be read by an 8 yr old. The man has no respect for Pavlik whatsoever. Considering his lack of sportsmanship, I hope he spends all of Sunday in a hospital.