Bernard Hopkins Finally at Peace with Leaving Boxing Behind as Final Fight Nears

Bernard Hopkins began his career 28 years ago with a majority-decision loss to Clinton Mitchell in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and he’ll bookend it with a fight against light heavyweight contender Joe Smith Jr. December 17 at the Forum in Los Angeles on HBO.

The 51-year-old says this will be his final fight.

How final we’ll know shortly after. The bug is real in boxing, and many fighters who swear they’ve had enough eventually wander their way back between the ropes in pursuit of one (or more) last go-around.

But Hopkins seems firm in his decision.

At peace, even.

He’s pushed the envelope of physical endurance, mental stamina and triumph of the human will so far past what anyone in boxing has ever and likely will ever achieve that nobody can fault him for riding off into the sunset.

On his terms, of course.

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He’s earned that much.

“I want to give a performance where you beg me to stay, and it's a challenge that Joe Smith will have to take on,” Hopkins said Wednesday on a media conference call. “For fighters to show their greatness, they need someone to bring it out.”

“Timing is everything, and I am doing it in my calculation," he continued. "I proved a bunch of people wrong already. There is no stone that has not been unturned, meaning that when I look back, I would have done everything that I wanted to.”

Nothing about Hopkins’ career has been typical.

He’s the product of one of Philadelphia’s roughest housing projects and frequently found his way into problems as a teenager. All that trouble culminated when a 17-year-old Hopkins was arrested for a slew of felonies and sentenced to 19 years in prison.

It could’ve ended there.

We’d never even know his name.

Hopkins secured an early release and began a boxing career that's spanned four decades and taught him plenty about life and how much a person can achieve when he puts his whole self into something.

Smith—a union construction worker from Long Island, New York, when he’s not fighting—will need something special in his bag to get the better of an individual who has made overcoming the statistics—in short, doing everything everyone said he couldn’t—the hallmark of his career.

"I'm in a competition with myself. When you reach this level of professionalism, you have done things that most fighters, especially the young fighters, haven't done yet,” Hopkins said. “I want to overdo myself.”

“Joe Smith is a hard puncher, he won't run, is a union guy, he won't lay back, and he won't try not to execute me," he explained. "However, Joe Smith has to be trained to pass four, five, six different styles that I will utilize in the ring, and he is going to have to be smart.”

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Hopkins chose Smith as the final foil of his career because of the New Yorker’s reputation for toughness and his blue-collar work ethic.

He’s solid—ask anyone in the New York boxing scene—and definitely tough, but he’s not a household name.

Maybe in part because of his foe’s lack of name recognition beyond the hardcore set of boxing fans, it seems that there is a pronounced lack of fanfare befitting the final start of a living legend.

Boxing is a niche sport to a certain degree, yes, but Hopkins is an all-time great.

He’s achieved more after his 40th birthday—the age he told his late mother he wouldn’t fight beyond—than most fighters are able to accomplish in their dreams at night before they wake up in the morning.

You don’t often get to see a fighter walk away on his own terms.

Boxing is a harsh mistress.

And not everyone gets to walk away with all their faculties intact and a list of accolades that require people to debate how high up the all-time list you belong.

Hopkins has all of that going for him, and he’s looking to make a statement—to prove one final point.

"I will be the matrix, I will be the executioner. I will be everything that I need to be to win," Hopkins said. "The sweet science is something that I've always been addicted too. My fight will be like watching the last game of Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant.”

"I am telling you all to bring your notepads, because come December 17, I am about to bring the textbook about boxing. That's what I'm going to show you all, so you can see it on primetime," he said. "I am looking forward to the final one. There will be no more like me."

That's for sure.