Name: JRE MMA Show #148 with Bernard Hopkins
Uploaded: 2023-10-05T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #148 with Bernard Hopkins' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #148 with Bernard Hopkins' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-05. Transcript available.

JRE MMA Show #148 with Bernard Hopkins

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
We're here. What's up?
Pleasure to meet you, man. I've been a gigantic fan of yours for a long time,
so it's a real pleasure.
That's what I've been hearing, Joe, but you know, I've also become a fan in the
last couple of years before you came to Austin.
I go out of L.A. a lot to do boxing, promoting in West Coast, East Coast with a
Golden Boy promotion.
I'm a partner, Oscar De La Hoya, so good to be met and good to meet you also.
What is it like transitioning from being a fighter to being a promoter?
Because Oscar, yourself, Floyd, only a few fighters have managed to do that
successfully like you have.
Well, first of all, it's not just walking into it.
I sort of got groomed in my career based on, I'll say, the last eight, nine
years of my 30-year career.
I took on the ownership and responsibility of making the last decisions.
I hired people that can give me the right information.
Not a lot, but just a few people that can give me the right information about
this particular fight.
For instance, Kelly Pavlik in Atlantic City.
Oscar De La Hoya fight in 06, 06, 07.
And I groomed myself for this moment to be able to be independent, but also
learn the business.
And let me tell you, it is difficult.
It's difficult not doing a job, per se, but it's difficult in the business, in
the structure of the business of boxing.
But the small family in boxing, whether they're here or there in a promotional
setting or commissioner setting, they would definitely try to discourage you by
any means necessary.
Yeah, I can imagine, especially yourself, because you had had so many issues
with promoters over the years, and you were so vocal about it, unlike a lot of
other fighters.
Yeah, I mean, because I was, one, forced to do it, to fight back.
And then, second, I looked at it as I really didn't have a choice, even though
I could have laid down or got down to their demands.
But I understood one thing, my instincts of survival, but also not just being
in the game.
I wanted different for myself.
And I had one bad experience.
Well, I had a couple of bad experiences, but I had one, the first bad
experience I had early in my career.
And I wound up getting out of that deal with Butch Lewis.
And I can mention names, not because he's deceased, but I can mention it
because I wound up being actually sued based on keeping me in check.
But I fired back, and I wound up, you know, counterpunching and got out of that
situation and spoke boldly about it and moved on to try to wake others up.
Not actually preach, but just bring it up about my situation.
If anybody recognized and experienced it, any fighter or anybody else, they can
grab some knowledge.
But that was the start of it.
That was the start of it.
My first professional fight, not first, but my first championship fight was Roy
Jones Jr.
And that fight was a parody fight.
It was a split, 1.4 split between me and Roy Jones.
I had the contract.
I kept all the stuff even to the day.
I can go back and reflect and bring not only contact for what I'm speaking
about, but I kept it because I paid for it.
It's called litigation.
And so I said to myself, how can it be a number?
750, 725 split, parity, the word parity, and I get 80,000 when it's all said
and done.
Now, to remind you, I'm fresh out of the penitentiary.
88, 89, 90, 90, I rebooted my career after, you know, losing my first fight.
Didn't box for 15 months.
So now we're in the, what, early 90s, and I rebooted myself back into reaching
a goal that I eventually reached.
But the business part, it had me thinking in between those moments of clamming
the ladder of being a contender,
that this is more than just going to the ring and winning and not winning.
This was something that I had to learn quick on the job learning.
There's a lot of shenanigans in boxing.
Yes.
I mean, you got a sport, Joe.
You got a sport that's unregulated, right?
Whether that means anything to people or not.
But there's no checks and balances there.
The people that set the rules, break the rules.
I'm going to say that again.
The people that set the rules, break the rules.
I mean, you know, where can you...
Is that the thing that they said was going to go out?
Yeah, I figured out.
This is happening.
Yeah, the cell phones and all like that.
Just make sure it's not a real problem.
Okay, national test.
I just got my two.
This is a national test.
Okay, all right.
See, I was thinking maybe again, that was somebody, you know, through boxing,
they know it's ready to come out.
They took the business.
You know, these people, man, you know, you got to understand that it's possible.
But the possibility of getting ousted, blackballed, and boxing such a small
circle of separate entities that will come together to oust that enemy.
And so you understand the bullseye is still on my back in certain reasons
because now, even though I'm in a different position of not only power, but for
my career, what I stood up for is not like the past.
So, as a promoter today, an Oscar De La Hoya go to more promotion, the day we
signed, the day we became partners, we don't become those who we despise.
Now, that's deep.
That was 20-something years ago.
You can find that anywhere out there in social media.
It's there.
We suited up and booted with contracts after signing, and that was one of the
statements that I continue to bring up 20-plus years later and be consistent
about it.
Now, that doesn't mean that every fighter is going to agree to the business
side that you have to represent as a promoter.
But one thing for sure, if your talent brings what you're asking and your
representation, whether they name themselves, which boxing does, manager,
consultant, advisor, I mean, I just named three entities that suck in the blood
out of the ignorance of the lack of knowledge of especially young ones
and the ones that don't want to learn, I'm not a savior, I'm not running and
trying to save anyone, but trying to understand my job and my role before my
lights go out, is that I love the sweet science, but I also understand that
boxing gave me a way not to be rotten in the penitentiary or in the graveyard.
That's what boxing did for me.
It gave me that opportunity that I had to walk the walk eventually, absolutely,
that I had to make sure that even though things can happen where you come up
short in a square circle, that I don't give up.
And so having that mentality and being consistent over the years and still be
able to talk in 2023, still know my name, my social security, all the numbers
that matters, all the things that attach to me is a blessing.
I'm not bragging.
I'm different.
Let them argue.
Let them on the side, whoever, fans or no fans.
One thing for sure, most will agree that I'm different.
Whatever that difference is, I take it.
But I'm different.
And keeping the course of being that, as time moves on, fast approaching 59,
January 15th, 1965.
I'm knocking on the door, 60.
You look fucking great.
Well, ducking helps.
Hey, Joe.
Hands up.
Come on, man.
Come on.
One thing for sure.
If you duck more than you take, you can be able to express yourself as time
goes on and you better be something worthy to your family.
Now, you're going to be worthy if you're there, but that's not fun to me.
I want to be there like I am now.
I got a 12-year-old son, you know, Bernard, right?
Three generations with him, right?
So I want to be there.
He's playing football, right?
Don't like boxing, right?
Threw gloves at him, I guess, when he was eight months.
He threw him back.
So my whole thing is like not save or not preach as I've been accused of a
couple of times, but it's just in me.
The spirit's in me.
The Muhammad Ali spirit is in me.
January 17th, January 15th.
I know that I'm here for more than a purpose, that I took that road.
I came through that road.
Some things in my life that I felt that it was needed, that I had to do, I had
to be that, because that was that mindset.
But once, again, not changing course on the conversation, once I understood my
value, and boy, you can appreciate this.
When I understood my value in that penitentiary at 17, when I got certified at
17, 5 to 15.
So you track 5 out of 15 in state prison, that leads you to back time, to walk
off, call parole.
They had a boxing gym there, and all of the Pennsylvania prisons, which was 30-plus,
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?
Like, when did you first walk into the gym?
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, middleweight.
My uncle was on both sides of the tree, mother and father, boxed that middleweight
in the 60s, 70s, early 70s.
So it was in my DNA.
Right.
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 shown to 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.
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 there, right?
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 of 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, look, this guy's taking an act and pitting on the floor.
I think he's pitting on his lap.
I mean, this might sound ignoran