"He will quit on his stool or snatch the towel out of his trainers hands and throw in his damn self!"

GL: Can you give us some thoughts on Joe Calzaghe's performance against Peter Manfredo as well as his expressed desire to fight you? "First of all I wasn't surprised that he won the fight. It was a carbon copy of what Joe Calzaghe has been doing the majority of his career, except the Jeff Lacy fight where he beat a professional who still had a lot of amatuer ways about him and not much experience. To give credit to Joe he exposed him. Outside of that in America, the jury is still out and has been deliberating for many years now. They won't come back with a verdict unless he comes over here and he beats somebody else, whether it's me or somebody else. The bottom line is I wasn't surprised about the outcome, I knew it would be short for the contender. He has a lot of heart and no reason for being in that ring unless his agenda was a payday. There's no way in the world that this guy was going to beat Joe in England or anywhere else.


"He wasn't going to beat Joe in New York. I don't understand how some of these fights get approved. The last three or four years, I've taken on the best in world. He has to come across the water, and everybody knows England doesn't pay the money that the United States market pays. What is the fuss about? We are the kings of the PPV money in the world. I wasn't surprised with the outcome. As far as I'm concerned, he  can take two or three more fights like that and break any record he's trying to break, whether it's mine or Larry Holmes because the path that he's on right now he could break Marciano's record if he continues to fight overmatched amatuers, slash just cause the paperwork says pro, it's no challenge. Boxing fans aren't stupid, they're very smart. He had a handpicked fight, he got a payday and he got 35,000 fans came to see another mismatch and they love it because what else does England have going for them in the boxing world? They have to take it and run with it.

"As far as calling my name, they've been calling Bernard Hopkins name out for years. Frank Warren speaks for Joe, unfortunately Joe doesn't speak for himself like 80-90% of other fighters unfortunately. The question to Frank Warren and Joe is, the only they have to do is get on a plane and if they want to fight we could fight in Yankee Stadium in New York City. They have direct flights that come from England to New York City, and guess what? Yankee Stadium or Madison Square Garden, it would be one of the biggest fights in boxing. But they're calling me out because legends don't call out other fighters. Last time I heard he wasn't considered a bonafide legend of this era. He might be considered that in England, but nobody is rushing to call him that over here.

"I'm a true champion Greg, I'm in the gym and I ain't really never left. Back to what I was saying, truthfully I was trying to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, but Rappaport didn't want to do it and now they're going to lose to Samuel Peter. I do pay attention to Boxingtalk where I get it hot off the press and you heard it here first. I just try to call out the best fights that I think the fans want to see."

GL: But obviously for Joe Calzaghe to even become a realistic discussion you first have to take care of business on July 21.

Bernard Hopkins: "Yeah. and not only that. Before I get onto that, I'd like to see a Joe Calzaghe fight a Jermain Taylor. Fight a Jermain Taylor, fight somebody who the Americans think are in the top five in his weight class. He definitely can't fight me at 175 so why he's calling my name out? He's calling my name to do what, to get himself a commercial or make people think he wants to fight so we could go to the negotiating table and it's a bunch of bullshit. It's a bunch of why don't you come here or go there? And I don't have time for that.

"Let's talk about Winky now. It is what it is. This is the second biggest fight of the year. The first one is Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, which is creeping up on us very quickly. I just hope Floyd is saving his money because he sures spends a lot, but he earned it and he should be able to do what he wants to do. I remember when Mike Tyson was blinging like that ten years and then you turn around and look back and that film gets shown to young kid coming up, I just hope he watched it.

"I'm in the gym trying to keep these old bones moving. He's planning on making the old man look like an old man, so all I could do is try to keep my cane sharp and drink some geritol every now and then. I try to throw a few jabs and stretch and get my rub downs to make sure these old bones don't lock up on me.

GL: It's tough being old.

BH: "It's tough being old, especially when these young wipper snappers are trying to get on your heels. These guys here want to put the old guy in the rocking chair. Maybe you should talk to Tarver and get him that rocking chair that they didn't give me. I could get it and start sitting on it."

GL: I spoke with Tarver recently and he said that he doesn't need redemption with Bernard Hopkins. He said he'd love the fight, but it's not something he's necessarily looking for, what are your thoughts on that?

BH: "Of course he doesn't need redemption, he was in the ring. He got executed. What am I going to do talk about Tarver? He's not even on my radar. Tarver would have to give me $5M for me to talk to him about a fight. Why would I fight him? That's going backwards. It wouldn't be competitive. Give me a controversy. At least with the Jermain Taylor fight we had a controversy with Duane Ford giving him the last round. Start something to give Boxingtalk something to gossip about, but what are we going to talk about?

"I think the movie was a C-. I don't think the movie was that great. I might seem like I'm hating and maybe I am. I'm not a movie critic, and maybe the Boxingtalk writers and readers and listeners can call in and say what they felt about it. I'm not hating, I'm just saying I think it was the worst one of all of them and I don't even know how many he made, I think it's six or seven.

"It damn sure wasn't one of the top five boxing movies of all times. My thing with Tarver is Greg, he better fight his little tune-up in Atlantic City and try to salvage what's left of his career. He's too Hollywood and he's too vain about what he thinks he is and he's not. He's back into that Roy Jones situation. He criticized Roy for being delusional and I supported him on that because he was right. Now he's delusional because he's on the other end of the stick. Now that's a hypocrite, but what are you going to do Greg? Whatcha going to do? One thing I could say for sure is there was no controversy about Bernard Hopkins whooping his ass on June 10, 2006.

GL: We do need to dialogue on Winky Wright telling me that you don't throw enough punches to hit him more than he's been hit in his entire career. He almost laughed it off.

BH: "I'm going to throw the punches that I know he's going to remember was there. It ain't the volume of punches, it's about the quality of punches you throw. I'm about quality. I might not have the biggest thing in the world, but I know how to use it so it's quality.

"If he thinks I got to throw a million punches to hit him on the gloves and hit him here and hit him there. I'm not doing that, my punches are going to count and the audience is going to scream when they see what I hit him with.  He could throw twenty punches and that's cool, but he's going to remember when I hit him."

GL: Winky Wright is the underdog in this fight and some people view this a win-win for Winky. Does that put any pressure to have to look spectacular since he's considered the smaller guy moving up?

BH: "Nah. It ain't going to be a win-win for Winky because at the end of the day he's still going to get beat the fuck up. How is it win-win when you look in the mirror and you got your ass kicked? I'm going to take three or four fights off of his career. The same thing I believe I did with Jermain Taylor. Those two fights with me took ten fights off of him and y'all wondering why he's looking the way he's looking. Y'all wondering why he can't knockout a Kassim Ouma or why he's picking Cory Spinks. I know why he's picking Cory Spinks and when he gets past Cory Spinks he's probably going to fight someone at lightweight. Look at the fighters I destroy, remember the Antwun Echols of the world, don't you see that they aren't the same physically afterwards? This is what I do and there's a great percentage of people that know that and we're not going to understand that. This isn't a win-win situation when one guy gets fucked up and beat up and thinks he's going to fight again and look good.

"Nah, I take fights off of careers man."

GL: You've said Winky can count on getting hit more than he ever has. He's never been stopped, can we expect to see him stopped for the first time of his life on July 21?

BH: "He's going to wish he did if he don't. He might stop himself."

GL: Does that mean he's going to quit on his stool or something?

BH: "That means he will quit on his stool or snatch the towel out of his trainers hands and throw in his damn self."

GL: Is there anything you'd like to say in closing?

BH: "The greatest fans are on Boxingtalk and we're going to do one of those sit down chats. I'm in the gym three and four months out. I want all of my fans to look forward to an execution. Winky Wright will take the worst beating that he's ever taken at any weight. Winky's career ends July 21. I'm bringing a tombstone to the press conference and Winky's name will be on it saying rest in peace."

M

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