Name: Bernard Hopkins on How Prison Prepared Him for Boxing
Uploaded: 2023-10-05T18:37:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bernard Hopkins on How Prison Prepared Him for Boxing' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bernard Hopkins on How Prison Prepared Him for Boxing' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-05. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience.
When I understood my value in that penitentiary at 17, when I got certified at
17, 5 to 15,
subtract 5 out of 15 in state prison, that leads you to back time, to walk off,
call parole.
They had a boxing gym there in all of the Pennsylvania prisons, which was 30
plus.
I had boxing in a penitentiary that was part of baseball, flag football, handball
on the wall.
That spark, that flame came back from a little short amateur career I had.
That's how I built my reputation up in my neighborhood.
I always fought, fighting in the streets, fighting in school.
How old were you when you first boxed as an amateur?
When did you first walk?
At nine years old, my uncle took me to the gym, my mother's brother, because my
father had a brother that boxed too.
And they all was my weight, well, I was all their weight when I started, middle
weight.
My uncle was on both sides of the tree, mother and father, boxed that middle
weight in the 60s, 70s, early 70s.
So it was in my DNA.
Can't help myself.
It's who I am and who I became.
But I got back to it when I went to the penitentiary.
So when you were an amateur, were you taking it seriously or were you...
No, I wasn't taking it seriously.
You weren't fully committed.
I was eating everything everybody else was eating at that age in the
neighborhood and what was there.
I mean, I remember fighting and getting a trophy about this big.
It's always the same stance, right?
Plastic trophy.
But, you know, to me, that was like a gold medal.
You know, they got the trophies showing everybody in the neighborhood and the
elementary school I was at.
And, you know, they take you to, you know, I don't want to get no free
commercials, but they take you to this, you know, still around, you know, to
get a hamburger, french fries.
And you probably know, you know, to take you there and we're happy.
That was it.
Right.
Amateur program.
But it was like the PAL, right?
I don't know if they have it here in Texas, the PAL called the Police Athletic
League.
It's big over there in the East Coast.
So the PAL lead was structured to get young black urban men that's on the
corner or young boys, right, to go to PAL.
Anybody can go there, but mostly it was in that neighborhood.
They would, you know, come to the gym and, you know, you can sign up for
amateur boxing.
You could be an Olympic gold medal.
You can do this and do that.
But I had, you know, family members.
I was in my DNA.
Once I was taken to the gym by Artie McLeod, we called him Artie, but it was
Arthur McLeod, called him Moose.
My mother's brother, middleweight, badass, look him up, Artie McLeod.
The streets took his career, obviously, based on what?
Lifestyle.
The streets of Philadelphia, the blue-collar town where Philadelphia can make
you or break you when it comes to making it out of this.
Not only sports, any entertainer, any success that you might have on your back
in the community.
And again, there's love there.
But a lot of us don't make it out, even though the talent was better than mine.
Strong, strong, right?
The trap of the streets.
The trap of the streets, but also what you're used to doing and what you're
used to thinking.
Listen, until I traveled through boxing, tell you how much boxing did for me.
To travel around the world multiple times, meet multiple people from every
class of life that I believe, you know, I'm pretty sure it's people I haven't
met.
But from here to there, to status or power or influencers, I say, man, the
world ain't just no filly.
The world is not just Raymond Rosen projects.
So I start understanding now, like even sitting there watching at that time,
how the fork and the spoon and the butter knife is on one side of the table.
And I'm looking at, look, this guy is taking a nap and putting it on the floor.
I think he's putting it on his lap.
I mean, this might sound ignorant, but you got to understand from that mindset
of what I'm saying.
Not understand my experience because some haven't.
But I start paying attention.
That was the key.
Just like in the boxing business, I start paying attention.
And then once I got to the point where I had a voice, means I had to do
something in boxing.
Nobody cares if you consider nobody.
10-1 because I lost my first fight in Atlantic City to Clinton Mitchell.
I was out for nine months out of penitentiary.
I wanted to get right back in the ring before I grabbed a kilo of cocaine like
everybody was selling in the 80s and 90s.
That was the plan?
I had a choice to do one or the other.
Right.
Everybody, listen, anybody on the West Coast and East Coast know the 80s and
the 90s era.
Right?
The 80s and 90s era in urban city was get down or lay down.
84, I was booked.
84, my brother got killed.
Shirley Mae Hopkins lost two sons in 84.
Talking about trauma.
That was a key, key, key.
push and experience that I had to do something to make her proud.
To make her proud once I get out.
Still got years to do.
How many years do you want to do it?
Five.
Five to 15.
So track five out of 15, the way the Pennsylvania Parole Board works, if you
get out, on your minimum is five.
You can do the 15, get into a stabbing, get write-ups, do something in there
that can be a crime too.
The five is the five is the minimum.
The 15th is the max.
So I had to walk a straight line amongst chaos.
No confusion.
Everybody, 90% of people there, they know why they're there.
Fuck what they say.
They know why they're there.
That moment after that first year of establishing myself, filling out the
environment of who you deal with, who you stay away from, who to snitch.
What guard, what CO is good, what CO is not.
Most of the COs live in the same neighborhood you grew up at.
It was the brother of your uncle.
Friend.
Who never had a felony, so he got to fill an application, he got a job, man, he's
the CO.
I know your dad.
Okay, thanks.
Hey, CO, can I, you know, get an extra commissary, whatever?
Go ahead.
So you're not really protected by nobody because anybody can sell you out or do
a favor.
But what I'm trying to understand is, just physically, I understand that you
didn't party.
I understand that you were very disciplined.
But how were you physically able to compete at that level, deep into your 40s?
Because, again, lifestyle, talent.
But everybody else falls apart.
Because everybody else is doing what everybody else has been doing.
What were you doing different physically?
Physically, I was always, even to the day, I pay attention to what I put in my
body is who I am, not what I actually look like.
And I understood that most people that I've seen in my time in boxing, Florida's
disciplined the same way.
Don't drink, don't smoke, and be sitting right there in the club and everybody
doing everything else.
You heard that before.
It's all over.
It's just, you got those type people like that.
But genetics plays, my grandmother lived in 99.
But then again, do I really take all the eggs and put it in that basket?
Because my father and mother died before 60.
So, I would say the lifestyle.
I would say the mindset or the teachings are both hit, not get hit.
You know, read books a lot.
Do something to exercise your brain.
Take care of your physical body.
The penitentiary.
The penitentiary taught me more going there once I got there to understand what
I wanted to do.
I wasn't just lifting weights in a weight yard and be swole up around a bunch
of men for five years.
I went and understood that, A, after a year went by, they got a boxing program.
I wanted to get off the block to go to another block and the guard, CO, said,
where are you going, Wild 41, 45?
Hey, I'm going to the gym, but I'm trying to go on A block to hang out before
count to go back on my block.
If I don't do it, if I don't get over there before count, I get it right up.
So I was forced to go down to the gym and seeing people sparring, and I said, I
want to be a part of that.
And I got my ass beating lesson, and I didn't like it, and I never been afraid
to go in the gym again.
Thirty years later, I said, I would never go in the ring or any situation ill-repaired
or unrepaired.
I always go in there prepared.
That lesson that I said to you then, and I say to you now, being in that
institution, having that experience, going in that gym for the first time and
say, after a year went by,
and only by accident, that I went down that gym because I was headed to another
block, as I said earlier.
And then get down that gym because boxing was in the penitentiaries in that era.
We had boxing there attached to the AAU, which is the same thing they have
outside.
They used to bring young fighters in there to fight us.
The amateurs have shows for the inmates.
You buy a ticket at the commissary, you go to the fights that Friday.
And inmates watch you, root for you.
I didn't like how I felt.
I wasn't prepared.
They didn't beat me because I wasn't better.
I got beat because I didn't run.
I got beat because of the ego.
I got beat because, as they say, the word hater, that I go down there and say,
you want to get in there with him?
Yeah, come on.
I used to box when I was in the streets.
You know, that's the common talk.
I used to do this when I was in the street.
Okay.
But those same old head trainers, that double life or one life sentence or two
life sentence,
they spoke about me on Behind the Glory, Brian Gumbel.
Look it up.
It's out there.
They spoke about me when I visited that same prison in my early professional
career.
Guess what?
Doing what?
Sparring for my Atlantic City preliminary fights when I was building my record
to get to where I became a champion.
I became the U.S.B.A. champion, which is a sister of the IBF World Championship
belt.
When I left that institution, anyone would have ran as far as they could, they
would have ran so far from that place and never want to see it again.
But after six or seven months of coming from a first professional loss with
Clinton Mitchell in Atlantic City, look it up.
I took off 89 and 90.
The streets was grabbing me.
I still had seven and a half years parole, do the math, nine years.
They booted my first fight, I believe, was in 91.
90 and 91.
But that crucial moment, that year and a half, if you look up my record, you'll
see Clinton Mitchell, 89, inactive.
You know, 89, inactive, 90, inactive, 91.
What was happening in 16 months?
I made a decision, meeting an old guy named Bowie Fisher.
God rest his soul.
He won the champ, we won the championships.
He should be in the Hall of Fame because of me.
I'm already in there.
I'm the only fighter he ever had.
Very few trainers go in the Hall of Fame with one Hall of Famer or fighter.
The fighter gets in, but the trainer might not.
And I'm not saying it's bad or good.
I'm just saying that's how it goes.