Bernard Hopkins Using Race, Donovan McNabb To Sell Rematch With Jean Pascal

Boxing fans may have been anxiously awaiting the rematch between Bernard Hopkins and Jean Pascal, but the fight was bereft of mainstream attention. Of course, it didn’t help that the public at large only gets interested in a small handful of huge fights a year and Hopkins/Pascal 2 comes a mere two weeks after Manny Pacquiao returned to the ring to face Shane Mosley.

The bellicose Hopkins, never one to shy away from controversy, has managed to bring a flood of attention to the bout in the past days and has done so without even talking about the fight at hand. Instead, Hopkins has turned his focus to an old target in Donovan McNabb. Via the Philadelphia Daily News:

“Forget this,” Hopkins said, pointing to his own dark skin. “He’s got a suntan. That’s all.”

Hopkins also implied that, while Vick and Owens remained true to their roots, McNabb did not, and that McNabb was rudely awakened when the Eagles traded him to the Redskins last year.

“Why do you think McNabb felt he was betrayed? Because McNabb is the guy in the house, while everybody else is on the field. He’s the one who got the extra coat. The extra servings. ‘You’re our boy,’ ” Hopkins said, patting a reporter on the back in illustration. “He thought he was one of them.”

Replace “guy in the house” with “slave in the house,” then replace “on the field” with “in the field,” and Hopkins’ message is Uncle Tom-clear.

The sports world quickly zoomed in on Hopkins’ comment. Despite the vicissitudes of sports media focus, a good old fashioned racial comment still brings the attention. After seeing ESPN pick up on the story via programs like Outside the Lines and First Take, one had to know that Bernard was going to be asked about McNabb again and that it would once again be picked and make the rounds. And that is absolutely what happened:

While Hopkins took his same shots at McNabb, he managed to paint himself with a brush from the extreme opposite (as transcribed from the video by Bad Left Hook):

“It takes courage for Rosa Parks to sit in the front of the bus. It takes courage for somebody to be a leader against something that’s wrong and bad and get assassinated. That takes courage, man. It takes courage for Bernard Hopkins to go down to New York City in 1999 and speak in front of the Senate hearings about the exploitation of the fighters in the business of boxing ... it took courage for me to do that. Racism is alive and well in this great country.”

Hopkins is as much an old pro outside the ring as he is in it. His failures to draw the same crowds as he once could in his home area of Philadelphia led to him having to have this rematch on Pascal’s home turf despite his claims that it was home cooking that led to the controversial draw in their first clash.

While the fight has sold over 13,000 tickets for the Bell Centre already (with hopes of upwards of 18,000 by fight time) Hopkins is trying to draw eyes to the fight on TV. A title win would make him the oldest man to win a major strap in the history of boxing, that win coming with the world paying attention will pay off at the gate for Bernard’s next fight.

Bernard is savvy enough to know this, and if he has to play media games using race, he’s going to do it. All for the good of the fight. And, of course, for the good of Bernard.