Famed boxer Bernard Hopkins, after reform school and prison, beat the streets by choosing to do the right thing.
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Long before Bernard Hopkins, current IBF, WBA, and IBA light-heavy weight champion was choosing the next hot neighborhood in Philadelphia to invest in—he currently owns properties in Northern Liberties, Naval Square and Brewerytown, among others—he was a troubled boy who made the conscious choice to terrorize Philadelphians, many who resided in pockets of the City that now yield him hefty returns.
And when he did find his way into a classroom, Hopkins exhibited the same disruptive behavior that he showed in the streets.
“I was bad in school,” he admitted openly to the more than sixty bright-eyed fans that huddled inside the gym of Marian Anderson Recreational Center in South Philadelphia, for a “Listen and Learn” session sponsored by Unity in the Community, “they could only suspend me so many times until they either kicked you out or sent you to a reform school.”
The oldest boxer to ever win a world title, defend a world title and also unify a weight division, Hopkins makes no excuses for the poor choices he made in his youth. While he acknowledges his environment wasn’t conducive to productivity, he stands firm on the belief “you still have choices to make, regardless of the environment; you still have to think about what you’re ready to do or not do.”
Despite being shipped off to a reform school and having being temporarily separated from his parents—an experience that might have straightened out most children with behavior problems—Hopkins notes that he didn’t change right away, unfortunately he had to be sentenced to 18 years in Grateford Prison for nine felonies before he realized the life of crime wasn’t something he wanted to make a career of.
What he did want to make a career out of was boxing. Growing up with his family in Raymond Rosen housing projects, Hopkins began fighting at age nine, “I always fought on the street,” he said. With very little do in prison, Hopkins started working out in the gym and soon “got the love back for boxing again.”
When the day finally came for Hopkins to be released from prison he was twenty-five years-old. Determined to never again be confined to a cell, Hopkins made the choice to use boxing as a way to improve his life.
“I stayed out 27 years and became one of the legendary fighters in boxing’s history,” Hopkins stated proudly, before receiving a healthy round of applause for his focused efforts.
The list of accomplishments when you Google “Bernard Hopkins” are pages long, and are mostly boxing related. But what means the most to Hopkins—who’s a minority owner in Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions—and what’s often overlooked by reporters, is that the 49 year-old entrepreneur walked off nine years of parole with a jailhouse GED in Philadelphia during the height of the crack epidemic.
“That was the hardest thing in my life,” he said.
For all the bad choices he made as a kid, Hopkins is grateful that he had the chance to apologize to his mother before she passed away. Although she didn’t get see her 60th birthday, she had the chance to indulge in the privileges of being a celebrity’s mother.
“My mother got a chance to witness my success as a middleweight champion for multiple years. She eventually got to move out of North Philadelphia and Germantown; she got a chance to see the world. I felt some comfort when she left that I got to show her some parts of the world that she wouldn’t have seen if I weren’t boxing.”
Though his wealth and brand recognition has primarily been generated from his in-ring action, Hopkins asserts:
“Boxing is what I’ve done very well, but it’s not who I define myself as.”
Bernard Hopkins perceives himself as a person that you’d be a fool to count out or underestimate, “a determined individual.”
Nearing a quarter century of life in January, Hopkins shows no sign of slowing down, as he tells me:
“I’m going to constantly keep dreaming of things to make a reality. As long as you have your freedom, you have to leave a legacy.”
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Photo: Frank Franklin II/AP