EXECUTIONER'S SONG:

Gut what it takes: Philly's Hopkins leaves no doubt after staggering shot to De La Hoya's midsection (Sam Donnellon, 9/20/04, Philadelphia Inquirer)

His adult life, his career, has been about muted moments, about avoiding lucrative but peril-filled shortcuts and traveling the longer, harder road to perdition.

So maybe it was appropriate, on the greatest night of Bernard Hopkins' roughened-up road to the top, that most of the 16,112 at MGM's Grand Arena were turned backward toward huge video screens as the Philly middleweight literally did a somersault across the ring. Maybe it was appropriate that in his greatest moment there was concern for the other fighter, concern that transcended Oscar De La Hoya's celebrity and centered more around his health.

Maybe it was appropriate, too, that the shot that finished the game but outmuscled De La Hoya was one to the gut, a point-blank connection to his liver, the kind of shot that is really intended to set up a finishing blow to the head.

"He could throw that punch a million times and he wouldn't land it exactly in the place he landed it," said De La Hoya, who was stopped in the ninth round Saturday night. "Right on the button. Perfect spot."

Perfect to render his younger foe bent over on all fours, while much of the crowd, their view blocked by a medical team and De La Hoya's concerned camp, swiveled around toward the screens for clues to what had just happened. Later, as replays showed the hit again, and the gruesome collapse, the crowd groaned almost as loudly as the fighter did in crumpling to the ring floor, his body, he said later, paralyzed.

Legend grows as Hopkins takes Oscar: Middleweight champ not just a Philly great (BERNARD FERNANDEZ, 9/20/04, Philadelphia Inquirer)

When he was doing time in Graterford penitentiary for robbery, and even after he'd become a world champion, Bernard Hopkins' boxing dreams were confined within the city limits of Philadelphia.

If you asked him back then what he hoped to accomplish as a prizefighter, he'd tell you that one day he wanted his neighbors to place him on a pedestal occupied by such princes of Philly pugilism as Bennie Briscoe, Willie "The Worm" Monroe, Eugene "Cyclone" Hart, Bobby "Boogaloo" Watts and George Benton.

"Those guys are legends," Hopkins said in 1995, after he won the IBF middleweight title by knocking out Segundo Mercado. "I owe them a debt I can never repay because they created the tradition I've tried to live up to."

It's funny how dreams can soar with increased success. Little Donald Trump put away his Monopoly board game one day and started building actual hotels on Boardwalk. And as the victories and prestige piled up, Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins began to think of his place in the world beyond Broad Street.

So it came to pass that Hopkins, who became the first man ever to knock out the most popular fighter on the planet, Oscar De La Hoya, found himself at the podium of a ballroom here in the MGM Grand, looking very much like a 39-year-old kid whose trading-card heroes had suddenly come to life.

Mike Tyson was standing off to the side. Thomas Hearns and Roberto Duran were seated in an audience mostly composed of media members who now wanted to know how Hopkins thought he stacked up in comparison to such middleweight greats as Sugar Ray Robinson, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Carlos Monzon and Jake La Motta.

Hopkins' ninth-round stoppage of De La Hoya Saturday night extended his division record of title defenses to 19. Asked if he would consider relinquishing one of his four world championship belts if presented the opportunity for a megabucks, non-middleweight fight, Hopkins shook his head. Money is important, sure, but immortality for a fighter cannot be purchased as if it were just another pricey item on the shelf at Neiman-Marcus.

"If I have to give up a belt and not reach my goal of 20 defenses, I'd be going against what I want to do for history," said Hopkins, who was paid a career-high $10 million to De La Hoya's $27 million.

Nice just to find an athelete who knows the history of his own sport.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 20, 2004 9:26 AM