THE middleweight champion of the world doesn’t have to buy his clothes at the Big & Tall man shop. He can shop off the rack, like most of the rest of us.
He needn’t duck under ceilings or have the doorways greased so he can make easy entrance into a room. His shoes will never be on display in the freak section of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. And yet, throughout boxing history, the No. 1 performer in the sport has often been a guy who fit naturally into a 40-regular.
From Sugar Ray Robinson to Jake LaMotta to Carlos Monzon to Marvin Hagler, the world middleweight champion has often been a bigger star than the reigning heavyweight champion, even if he has rarely stood taller than 5-10 and never weighed more than 160 pounds.
That is one of the main attractions of the middleweight division, that its king doesn’t have to be a giant. He merely needs to hit like one.
For the past 10 years or so, the realm of the medium-sized man has been decidedly mediocre.
But that could change after tomorrow night’s fight between Felix Trinidad and Bernard Hopkins at Madison Square Garden. The important thing is not that the middleweight title will be unified for the first time in more than eight years.
But after tomorrow night, there will be no more doubt about who the best middleweight in the world is. Especially if it turns out to be Trinidad, as I strongly suspect.
Since he beat Segundo Mercado to win the IBF title in 1994, Hopkins has been generally considered the world’s best middleweight, if only through lack of any legitimate competition.
He has defended that title 14 times since, outlasting the “reigns” of the Julio Cesar Greens and the Keith Holmeses and the William Joppys and all the other belt-holders who briefly called themselves middleweight champion of the WBA or WBC. But in Trinidad, Hopkins is about to face a fighter who has been superior at every level, from his debut as a junior welterweight 11 years ago to his brutal KO of Joppy in his first middleweight bout in May.
At 28 – eight years younger than Hopkins – Trinidad has the youth, the build and the talent to be what boxing has lacked since Hagler retired in 1987: a truly great middleweight champion, one who can dominate boxing in a downtime for heavyweights, the way Hagler did during the Larry Holmes Era and Monzon did during the sour first reign of George Foreman.
It is not out of the question, of course, that Hopkins (39-2-1, 28 KOs) could win the fight. He is a solid middleweight, stronger than he is talented and more awkward than he is powerful.
He has been in with the fighter many consider the best – Roy Jones Jr. – and come away with a credible decision loss, although at times it seemed as if both he and Jones had signed a non-aggression pact before the fight. And unlike Trinidad, Hopkins has proven durable among other middleweights, although for Trinidad, that is likely only a matter of time.
Trinidad (40-0, 33 KOs) has been a major talent at welterweight and junior middleweight, and with his lanky, 5-11 frame, the increase in weight can only help him. Against Joppy, Trinidad wasn’t just good. He was scary.That is one thing Hopkins has never been. Workmanline, yes. Dirty, sometimes. Determined, always. But nowhere near great, although certainly better than average.
These days, in the average-guy’s division, that might be enough to win you a title belt. But it will never make you a star.
That position is Trinidad’s for the taking. The bet here is that he’ll grab it, inside of 10 rounds.
