BERNARD'S DREAM A NIGHTMARE FOR JERMAIN

October 14, 2005 - by Ron Borges

Bernard Hopkins has a dream today. It's to turn Dec. 3 into a nightmare for Jermain Taylor.

Not just into a bad night. Into a nightmare from which young Taylor never recovers.

That is a harsh promise but it is the one the former middleweight champion made this week after his rematch with Taylor on Dec. 3 was formally announced by HBO pay-per-view. Words come cheaply in boxing.

Fighters often say many threatening things in the weeks and months leading up to a big match and most of the time that is all they are. Words. Words as empty as a trash can rolling down the avenue, ever reminding us after the fight that sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you.

Yet there is a glowering malevolence behind the eyes of Bernard Hopkins. Not just this time but all the time. This is a man who has been angry for many years. Angry at the politics of a sport he loves and has long dominated but one that has been an unfaithful lover in return. Angry that his record-breaking 10-year title reign came to an end on a hot, July night when he clearly did more damage to his opponent than that opponent did to him.

At nearly 41, Hopkins has for years believed the forces of boxing have conspired against him. Some have called him paranoid and he has acknowledged the possibility himself. Yet he knows that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean no one is chasing you and so he looks at what happened to him July 16 in Las Vegas, a town where all the cards are stacked against you, and believes another injustice has been perpetrated upon him and someone must pay for it. That someone is Jermain Taylor.

Truth be told, if boxing is the hurt business (which it is), Bernard Hopkins put a lot more hurt on Taylor 2 1/2 months ago than Taylor put on him. At the end of the day, one guy left with his daughter in his lap to go to an after party. The other guy left for the hospital with a concussion and a towel on his head to soak up the blood from a cut that required some intricate stitching to close.

Hopkins looks at that such things and knows who won the fight. He knows who passed the eye test and who failed. He knows who left the ring without a mark on him after finishing strong and who left battered and weary. Hence, he knows who won and who lost for his definition of victory is an elemental one born years ago in a different and even more dangerous environment.

Bernard Hopkins was a self-admitted street prowler as a youth who did over five years in prison for strong-armed robbery while still a teenager and then turned his life around with the help of the most violent sport on earth. To such a man, defeat is never accepted. But the kind he endured in Las Vegas was beyond bearing because, in his mind, it was not defeat at all. It was his old business re-surfacing. It was strong-armed robbery, with a pencil as the weapon of choice.

"I got many a beating because of (my) body language,'' Hopkins said this week. "Look at the tape. That was a losing corner. A lot of people are being honest. They're calling it what it was. Over 70 per cent of the internet polls had Bernard Hopkins winning. The one thing they know is Jermain Taylor got a gift.''

Taylor's camp argues that while the fight was close and the younger man indeed faded down the stretch, he had done enough early to win the fight. Because of Hopkins' slow start, they argue, the challenger had so many rounds in the bank that even a furious rally that had Taylor in trouble in rounds 11 and 12 wasn't enough for Hopkins to retain his title.

Hopkins counters, based on those cards, that had judge Duane Ford not mysteriously been the only man in America who thought Taylor won the final round the fight would have been a draw and he would have retained his title. Such arguments make grist for the boxing mill, especially at times like these, several months before a scheduled rematch to settle the issue.

In a sense, Hopkins believes what happened to him in July will only serve to make this second fight a bigger victory for him in what he says will be the final major fight of his career. But he is saying more than that this time. He's promising more than victory over his young opponent.

He's promising the kind of victory from which Joe Lipsey, who was 25-0 when he faced Hopkins and 25-1-and-retired after they met, could never recover.

He's reminding Taylor that Sergundo Mercado made the mistake of fighting Hopkins twice and was never the same. Same was true for a bright prospect named Robert Allen after Hopkins stopped him in the seventh round of their rematch after administering a hellacious beating. Antwun Echols endured the same fate, being stopped in their second fight and slipping back into boxing's long shadows after that without again emerging as the same man.

Now Hopkins has made a bold promise. Despite facing a champion who was barely a teenager when Hopkins won his first title 10 years ago, he says there is a lesson he is about to administer from the old school of boxing. A hard and painful lesson from which young Taylor will not be the same.

"(For) everyone who has stepped in the ring with Bernard Hopkins twice there wasn't a great outcome,'' Hopkins (46-3-1) reminded Taylor. "Not just that night but the rest of their careers. Roy Jones understood the whole landscape and demeanor is different (in a rematch), which is why he didn't give me one. I must and I will leave the game with a knockout victory overe Jermain Taylor. For people who have delusions that four rounds make a fight, I must stop Jermain Taylor.

"When he gets hurt this time I'll execute him. I was guilty of one thing in that fight. I was guilty of not fulfilling my ring name. The Executioner is supposed to execute. I didn't pull the switch. I kick myself when I revist that. After this fight I'll leave the game and take his future with me.''

Hopkins contends the decision that went against him 115-113 on two cards even though veteran judge Jerry Roth saw it cleanly for Hopkins, 116-112, was payback for all his years bucking the system. Hopkins has sued more promoters and fight managers than Don King. He's won more than a few of those legal battles as well, although not his last one against his former promoter, Lou DiBella, who now handles Taylor's affairs.

Because of the presence of DiBella in Taylor's corner, Hopkins really suffered two losses in July. One a fight that cost him his revered world title belts, the other a sum of slightly more than $600,000 which Hopkins has yet to pay DiBella after losing a defamation suit.

That sidelight became a major part of the story when he first met Taylor because he and DiBella were vocal about their enmity for each other.

DiBella now says that side of things is over, washed away by his fighter's victory in July. But nothing gets erased from the books on Bernard Hopkins' ledger. He remembers every slight, both real and imagined. He remembers every doubter. He remembers every hand that was raised in favor of Taylor, both before their first fight and after it.

It's all become high octane fuel for him, a fuel that is furiously driving him to avenge his first loss in a dozen years not just with victory but with a bone-crushing, spirit-breaking kind of victory that leaves Taylor diminished not simply by the loss of those title belts but by the loss of something more. The loss of any sense that a boxing ring is a safe place for him to be.

That is Bernard Hopkins' goal on Dec. 3. It is not just to beat Jermain Taylor. It is to break him.

"If I don't knock out Jermain Taylor, I don't win based on the outcome of July 16,'' Hopkins said. "I know that. This is the system I've been up against for years. But I'm going to have the last laugh. Jermain Taylor has to be destroyed. Last time I gave them an opportunity (to screw him). They couldn't wait for another guy. I don't think that's paranoia. I think it's awareness."

"I exposed it on July 16. You all saw what happened. I wasn't seeing ghosts or just talking off the top of my head just to be talking. Eighty per cent (of the writers at ringside) called it the way it is. Credible people, some of whom who are not my friends. How can Jermain Taylor look himself in the mirror? He knows he has to go in and make that right."

"He's a disputed champion. I was the undisputed champion. There was no doubt (when Hopkins held the titles). No controversy before July 16. So we have to settle it. I must and I will leave the game with a knockout victory over Jermain Taylor. This will be a great fight to end the year on. I'm not only going to beat Jermain Taylor, I'm going to destroy his future.''