The inspiration was the legendary light-heavyweight boxer Archie Moore, who came to Montreal to fight the much-younger Yvon Durelle in 1958.
A natural enough parallel for 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins, a multiple world champion in two different weight classes who was trying to make history in the Bell Centre on Saturday.
And make it he did.
In a carbon copy of his first fight with Jean Pascal, Hopkins weathered the early storm and then took control of the bout as the night wore on, punishing the man 18 years his junior with a relentless onslaught.
Hopkins (52-5-2) is the oldest man to win a world boxing title, and one of the oldest individual athletes to win a world championship.
“I didn't feel like I was 46 tonight, I felt more like 36,” Hopkins said. “I can say I'm a great fighter, it was exciting, I think everybody enjoyed themselves.”
The judges each had Hopkins ahead on points after the 12th round, the cards read 115-113, 116-112, 115-114.
Despite a late charge from WBC title-holder Pascal of Montreal – with a packed Bell Centre standing and his corner furiously urging him on – Hopkins did enough to win.
The result was greeted with boos, but Montreal’s boxing public is sophisticated enough to know, in their heart of hearts, that Pascal didn’t do enough to win And at the end, the bewildered Pascal briefly refused to hand his title belts over.
“Bernard fought a great fight, he’s a great champion . . . he has a great defence and knows a lot of tricks,” a deflated Pascal said after the bout. “These two fights will lead me to the next level, I learned a lot from Bernard and his style.”
Hopkins’ will go down as a performance for the ages, where he out-boxed a younger, fitter man – although in fairness the crafty veteran has taken up permanent residence in Pascal’s head with a relentless psychological barrage.
Against almost any other fighter, Pascal would surely have won for the home town crowd..
Hopkins entered first to a personalized version of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” – complete with sequine-clad back-up singers waiting for him in the ring.
Pascal, the champion, was escorted to the ring by a pair of rappers, and brushed past Hopkins, who was wearing his customary black balaclava, in the centre of the ring.
Pascal then confronted the 46-year-old, opening his black-and-gold robe to reveal a t-shirt that read “Are you willing to take the test?” – a reference to Pascal’s earlier allegations that Hopkins uses performance-enhancing drugs.
Hopkins smirked and gave him a light shove.
For all the tension and atmosphere, neither boxer landed a meaningful in the first round.
The second was more eventful, with Pascal landing a brisk combination and Hopkins counter-punching, late in the round he slipped a lunging Pascal right and landed a couple of quick rights of his own.
In the third, Pascal rocked Hopkins with a solid left hand, but Hopkins soon retaliated with a flurry that hurt the champion.
Pascal had vowed to put Hopkins away in four – and after a sedate opening to the round Hopkins stuck his tongue out at Pascal, which prompted the champion to unleash a furious barrage of shots, none of which did much damage.
But as the round came to a close, Pascal landed a combination that seemed to do some damage.
In the sixth round, Hopkins again taunted the 28-year-old champion by flicking his tongue and by hitting him during clinches and leaning on him – at the bell, Hopkins said something to Pascal and turned away, although it clearly incensed the Montreal figher, who tried to get at the challenger before being shepherded away by the officials.
Before the seventh, Hopkins dropped and did some push-ups to mock Pascal, whose corner had him sitting in his corner until the last possible moment – a tactic they used throughout the fight. Later in the round, Pascal shimmied and danced in front of his opponent, to the crowd’s delight. Later, Pascal briefly found himself on the canvas, but it was ruled a slip.
After several close rounds – Hopkins landed more and better punches throughout – Pascal had two stumbles in the 10th and though both were ruled slips, Hopkins had tagged him with right hands immediately before.
And if Hopkins had been willing to deploy the stalling tactics – leaning, clinching and holding – in the early part of the fight, the champion was the one who started resorting to skullduggery.
In the 11th, Pascal locked Hopkins’ arm and struck him with a series of quick right hooks.
The fight card drew 17,560 fans to the Bell Centre, although the roar they produced as Pascal walked in was as loud as any Montreal Canadiens’ game – an image that was doubtless appreciated by HBO, which broadcast the bout.
Afterward, Hopkins again did some push-ups, and Pascal one-upped him by doing several with one arm.
There was plenty of bad blood to go around in the build-up to the re-match – Hopkins memorably warned Pascal that he might kill him in the ring.
Prior to that, Pascal had accused Hopkins of using performance-enhancing drugs.
And when the two first met on Dec. 18, 2010 in Quebec City, Pascal knocked the 46-year-old legend down twice in the early rounds, but Hopkins rebounded as the night wore on and won the bulk of the final eight rounds.
The performance was impressive enough that one of the judges gave Hopkins the edge on his scorecard – the two others saw the fight as even, and so the result was a controversial majority draw.
The co-main event pitted a pair of former world light-heavyweight title holders vying to be next in line for a title shot, expatriate Romanian boxer Adrian Diaconu, who has made Montreal his home for the past decade, and American southpaw Chad Dawson.
Diaconu’s only two losses as a pro going into the fight came at the hands of Pascal.
The 27-year-old Dawson also lost his one and only fight with Pascal in 2009 – it was stopped in the 11th round because of a cut he sustained from an accidental head-butt.
With the winner of the fight likely to face the winner of Hopkins and Pascal – Dawson staked his claim as the top contender.
In an efficient, economical performance, Dawson dictated much of the fight against his much shorter opponent, and staggered Diaconu on several occasions, notably with a crisp left hand as the fifth round expired. Then he drilled him with another left to the chin in the seventh. By the ninth round, Diaconu’s cheekbones and brow had started to swell and some boos began raining down from impatient fans.
The response from Diaconu was his best flurry of the night, although Dawson merely shook his head as if to signal he hadn’t been hurt.
Diaconu is a tough fighter to close out, and was the busier of the two men even if he wasn’t able to find a way through Dawson’s defence.
The game 32-year-old Diaconu came on in the later rounds and even had Dawson on the carpet in the 11th, although it was a clear slip.
The final round belonged to Diaconu, but it wasn’t enough to stop Dawson from winning a unanimous decision to run his record to 30-1. It was Diaconu’s third loss in 30 professional bouts.
“I know I’d won the fight . . . I wasn’t nervous at all coming to his home town,” Dawson said after the fight.
The Connecticut native said he’s still getting used to working with legendary trainer Emmanuel Steward, who has handled him for the last eight months, vowing that “next time I’ll be 100 per cent better.”
Immediately before the Diaconu-Dawson fight, undefeated heavyweight Oscar Rivas, who boxed for Colombia at the 2008 Olympics but now calls Montreal home, faced the undefeated Zsolt Zathurecky in a six-round bout.
It didn’t last that long.
First, with less than 30 seconds elapsed in the opening round, Rivas put Zathurecky down with an overhand right, straight left combination; then he knocked him down again with a right-hook left-hook combination. Then he finished the fight before the first round bell rang when he hit the big Hungarian with a left hand to the midsection that he followed up with a right hook to the head.
Rivas is now undefeated in six professional fights, Zathurecky is 3-1.
Promising Canadian junior middleweight Mikael Zewski of Trois-Rivieres, Que., who is in the same Golden Boy Productions stable as Hopkins, ran his professional record to 10-0 in a clinical dismantling of Indiana-based boxer Ruben Galvan (27-17-4).
The 22-year-old dominated the first two rounds – despite Galvan waving at him to come forward – and ended the fight at 1:44 of the third round with a devastating left uppercut that caught his opponent cleanly.
“It was a short, quick one, and I think I surprised him,” Zewski said. “I hit him with harder shots during the fight and hurt him, but that one he didn’t expect.”
Fellow junior middleweight Kevin Bizier of Saint-Emile, Que., chalked up an identical result, knocking out Mauro Lucero (46-14-1) a wily veteran from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The turning point in what had been a fairly even fight came early in the fifth of eight scheduled rounds when Lucero was cut badly over the right eye after an accidental clash of heads. As the round ticked into the final seconds, Bizier (15-0) hit the Mexican with a crushing left-hand, catching him over the liver.
Lucero took a knee and was counted out.
Elieder Alvarez, a Montreal cruiserweight coached by Pascal trainer Marc Ramsey, won a comprehensive decision in his four-round bout against Quebec City journeyman and part-time pro fighter David Whittom, a construction worker whose collection of body art includes a cursive tattoo across his back that reads “Mommy’s Little Boy.”
Earlier in the evening, Montreal-based light-heavyweight Nicholson Poulard (17-3) won a unanimous 10-round decision over Puerto Rican journeyman Frankie Santos (17-10-4).
In the evening’s first bout, super-heavyweight Didier Bence of Laval, Que., defeated 41-year-old Dwayne Story of Moncton, N.B., in a second-round technical knock-out.
It was only Bence’s second professional fight – the 23-year-old former national team boxer once won bronze at the Pan-American Games – and it ran his record to 2-0, both wins by knockout.
A natural enough parallel for 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins, a multiple world champion in two different weight classes who was trying to make history in the Bell Centre on Saturday.
And make it he did.
In a carbon copy of his first fight with Jean Pascal, Hopkins weathered the early storm and then took control of the bout as the night wore on, punishing the man 18 years his junior with a relentless onslaught.
Hopkins (52-5-2) is the oldest man to win a world boxing title, and one of the oldest individual athletes to win a world championship.
“I didn't feel like I was 46 tonight, I felt more like 36,” Hopkins said. “I can say I'm a great fighter, it was exciting, I think everybody enjoyed themselves.”
The judges each had Hopkins ahead on points after the 12th round, the cards read 115-113, 116-112, 115-114.
Despite a late charge from WBC title-holder Pascal of Montreal – with a packed Bell Centre standing and his corner furiously urging him on – Hopkins did enough to win.
The result was greeted with boos, but Montreal’s boxing public is sophisticated enough to know, in their heart of hearts, that Pascal didn’t do enough to win And at the end, the bewildered Pascal briefly refused to hand his title belts over.
“Bernard fought a great fight, he’s a great champion . . . he has a great defence and knows a lot of tricks,” a deflated Pascal said after the bout. “These two fights will lead me to the next level, I learned a lot from Bernard and his style.”
Hopkins’ will go down as a performance for the ages, where he out-boxed a younger, fitter man – although in fairness the crafty veteran has taken up permanent residence in Pascal’s head with a relentless psychological barrage.
Against almost any other fighter, Pascal would surely have won for the home town crowd..
Hopkins entered first to a personalized version of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” – complete with sequine-clad back-up singers waiting for him in the ring.
Pascal, the champion, was escorted to the ring by a pair of rappers, and brushed past Hopkins, who was wearing his customary black balaclava, in the centre of the ring.
Pascal then confronted the 46-year-old, opening his black-and-gold robe to reveal a t-shirt that read “Are you willing to take the test?” – a reference to Pascal’s earlier allegations that Hopkins uses performance-enhancing drugs.
Hopkins smirked and gave him a light shove.
For all the tension and atmosphere, neither boxer landed a meaningful in the first round.
The second was more eventful, with Pascal landing a brisk combination and Hopkins counter-punching, late in the round he slipped a lunging Pascal right and landed a couple of quick rights of his own.
In the third, Pascal rocked Hopkins with a solid left hand, but Hopkins soon retaliated with a flurry that hurt the champion.
Pascal had vowed to put Hopkins away in four – and after a sedate opening to the round Hopkins stuck his tongue out at Pascal, which prompted the champion to unleash a furious barrage of shots, none of which did much damage.
But as the round came to a close, Pascal landed a combination that seemed to do some damage.
In the sixth round, Hopkins again taunted the 28-year-old champion by flicking his tongue and by hitting him during clinches and leaning on him – at the bell, Hopkins said something to Pascal and turned away, although it clearly incensed the Montreal figher, who tried to get at the challenger before being shepherded away by the officials.
Before the seventh, Hopkins dropped and did some push-ups to mock Pascal, whose corner had him sitting in his corner until the last possible moment – a tactic they used throughout the fight. Later in the round, Pascal shimmied and danced in front of his opponent, to the crowd’s delight. Later, Pascal briefly found himself on the canvas, but it was ruled a slip.
After several close rounds – Hopkins landed more and better punches throughout – Pascal had two stumbles in the 10th and though both were ruled slips, Hopkins had tagged him with right hands immediately before.
And if Hopkins had been willing to deploy the stalling tactics – leaning, clinching and holding – in the early part of the fight, the champion was the one who started resorting to skullduggery.
In the 11th, Pascal locked Hopkins’ arm and struck him with a series of quick right hooks.
The fight card drew 17,560 fans to the Bell Centre, although the roar they produced as Pascal walked in was as loud as any Montreal Canadiens’ game – an image that was doubtless appreciated by HBO, which broadcast the bout.
Afterward, Hopkins again did some push-ups, and Pascal one-upped him by doing several with one arm.
There was plenty of bad blood to go around in the build-up to the re-match – Hopkins memorably warned Pascal that he might kill him in the ring.
Prior to that, Pascal had accused Hopkins of using performance-enhancing drugs.
And when the two first met on Dec. 18, 2010 in Quebec City, Pascal knocked the 46-year-old legend down twice in the early rounds, but Hopkins rebounded as the night wore on and won the bulk of the final eight rounds.
The performance was impressive enough that one of the judges gave Hopkins the edge on his scorecard – the two others saw the fight as even, and so the result was a controversial majority draw.
The co-main event pitted a pair of former world light-heavyweight title holders vying to be next in line for a title shot, expatriate Romanian boxer Adrian Diaconu, who has made Montreal his home for the past decade, and American southpaw Chad Dawson.
Diaconu’s only two losses as a pro going into the fight came at the hands of Pascal.
The 27-year-old Dawson also lost his one and only fight with Pascal in 2009 – it was stopped in the 11th round because of a cut he sustained from an accidental head-butt.
With the winner of the fight likely to face the winner of Hopkins and Pascal – Dawson staked his claim as the top contender.
In an efficient, economical performance, Dawson dictated much of the fight against his much shorter opponent, and staggered Diaconu on several occasions, notably with a crisp left hand as the fifth round expired. Then he drilled him with another left to the chin in the seventh. By the ninth round, Diaconu’s cheekbones and brow had started to swell and some boos began raining down from impatient fans.
The response from Diaconu was his best flurry of the night, although Dawson merely shook his head as if to signal he hadn’t been hurt.
Diaconu is a tough fighter to close out, and was the busier of the two men even if he wasn’t able to find a way through Dawson’s defence.
The game 32-year-old Diaconu came on in the later rounds and even had Dawson on the carpet in the 11th, although it was a clear slip.
The final round belonged to Diaconu, but it wasn’t enough to stop Dawson from winning a unanimous decision to run his record to 30-1. It was Diaconu’s third loss in 30 professional bouts.
“I know I’d won the fight . . . I wasn’t nervous at all coming to his home town,” Dawson said after the fight.
The Connecticut native said he’s still getting used to working with legendary trainer Emmanuel Steward, who has handled him for the last eight months, vowing that “next time I’ll be 100 per cent better.”
Immediately before the Diaconu-Dawson fight, undefeated heavyweight Oscar Rivas, who boxed for Colombia at the 2008 Olympics but now calls Montreal home, faced the undefeated Zsolt Zathurecky in a six-round bout.
It didn’t last that long.
First, with less than 30 seconds elapsed in the opening round, Rivas put Zathurecky down with an overhand right, straight left combination; then he knocked him down again with a right-hook left-hook combination. Then he finished the fight before the first round bell rang when he hit the big Hungarian with a left hand to the midsection that he followed up with a right hook to the head.
Rivas is now undefeated in six professional fights, Zathurecky is 3-1.
Promising Canadian junior middleweight Mikael Zewski of Trois-Rivieres, Que., who is in the same Golden Boy Productions stable as Hopkins, ran his professional record to 10-0 in a clinical dismantling of Indiana-based boxer Ruben Galvan (27-17-4).
The 22-year-old dominated the first two rounds – despite Galvan waving at him to come forward – and ended the fight at 1:44 of the third round with a devastating left uppercut that caught his opponent cleanly.
“It was a short, quick one, and I think I surprised him,” Zewski said. “I hit him with harder shots during the fight and hurt him, but that one he didn’t expect.”
Fellow junior middleweight Kevin Bizier of Saint-Emile, Que., chalked up an identical result, knocking out Mauro Lucero (46-14-1) a wily veteran from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The turning point in what had been a fairly even fight came early in the fifth of eight scheduled rounds when Lucero was cut badly over the right eye after an accidental clash of heads. As the round ticked into the final seconds, Bizier (15-0) hit the Mexican with a crushing left-hand, catching him over the liver.
Elieder Alvarez, a Montreal cruiserweight coached by Pascal trainer Marc Ramsey, won a comprehensive decision in his four-round bout against Quebec City journeyman and part-time pro fighter David Whittom, a construction worker whose collection of body art includes a cursive tattoo across his back that reads “Mommy’s Little Boy.”
Earlier in the evening, Montreal-based light-heavyweight Nicholson Poulard (17-3) won a unanimous 10-round decision over Puerto Rican journeyman Frankie Santos (17-10-4).
In the evening’s first bout, super-heavyweight Didier Bence of Laval, Que., defeated 41-year-old Dwayne Story of Moncton, N.B., in a second-round technical knock-out.
It was only Bence’s second professional fight – the 23-year-old former national team boxer once won bronze at the Pan-American Games – and it ran his record to 2-0, both wins by knockout.
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