**** FIGHTER OF THE DAY: BERNARD HOPKINS **** (RG) Bernard Humphrey Hopkins, Jr., known as The Executioner (born January 15, 1965) is an American boxer. Hopkins is most widely known for his career in the middleweight class, where he held at least a piece of the championship in that class from 1994 until 2005. Having held the International Boxing Federations middleweight title first, he unified the titles of all three of boxings major sanctioning bodies in 2001 by winning the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council titles. In 2004 Hopkins, having added The Ring middleweight championship to his resume as well, became the first middleweight to have held all four of what are considered the major belts when he won the World Boxing Organizations championship from Oscar De La Hoya. Having defended a world middleweight title a record 20 times before losing the title in 2005, he is considered one of the greatest middleweight champions of all time. The Ring ranked him #3 on their list of the 10 best middleweight title holders of the last 50 years. After losing his title to Jermain Taylor in 2005 and failing to regain it in a rematch, Hopkins moved up in weight and began challenging for the light heavyweight championship. In his first fight in the class Hopkins won the International Boxing Organization and Ring titles from Antonio Tarver. Hopkins lost the Ring title to Joe Calzaghe in 2008, but later regained the belt in his second fight with Jean Pascal (after controversially drawing with him in their first fight). Hopkins also won Pascals WBC title in the match, and at 46 years, 4 months, and 10 days old broke George Foremans record as the oldest fighter to ever win a world championship. On March 9, 2013, Hopkins defeated Tavoris Cloud for the IBF light heavyweight championship of the world at age 48 becoming the oldest man in recorded boxing history to win a recognized world boxing championship and to break the record set 21 months earlier, by himself. In addition to being an active boxer, Hopkins is also a minority partner with Golden Boy Promotions. youtube/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=m5vnL3aB_MU
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 16:57:26 +0000
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