Execution

No doubt all you true No Masians remember where you were on this night five years ago. Hopkins/Trinidad is just one of those fights that was so big you remember where you watched it.

It was such an event, a middleweight unification bout at the Garden, and then so soon after 9/11. The fight itself turned out to be not so great, memorable only for what a virtuoso performance Hopkins laid on Tito. But even though it was such a lopsided affair, the drama never really dissipated. Round after round of Bernard utterly dominating, and still you kept waiting for that one patented Trinidadian right that was going to find its way home and turn the tide.

In the end it was a right from Ex, a brain-damaging right hook, that closed the deal, knocking out a completely spent Tito in the 12th and making Bernard the first undisputed middleweight champ since Ray Leonard in 1987.

It was a cathartic evening for BHop, a night he had waited his entire career for, the night where he finally earned the respect he’d sought, and deserved, for years. The world was thinking Tito, but Bernard knew the score, cocky as always, defiant, trampling on the Puerto Rican flag and then betting 100 large on himself to win.

It’s funny to write about this fight so soon after writing the Hagler/Minter piece a few days ago. Bernard and Marvelous certainly have a line across the generations. I remember when we had Bernard on my old show, Classic Now, and we asked him how he would stack up against some old fighters. He thought he would destroy Ray Leonard and that he would outpoint Monzon in a split decision. When it came to Hagler, he just shook his head and laughed. “That would be an ugly, ugly fight,” he said. “I don’t know who would win, but afterwards we’d both be sipping our steaks through straws and wondering why in the hell we did this.”

If you want to read more on Hopkins/Trinidad in the 9/11 atmosphere, check out this article by Michael Woods from ESPN.com.