Hopkins on MMA

You probably don’t care that Bernard Hopkins is fighting Roy Jones, Jr. on Saturday: Hopkins is 45, Jones is 41, and both men agreed to a rematch only after enough time had passed that it really doesn’t matter who wins. (If that sounds like a knock on boxing, it’s not. At the rate things are going, we’ll see Fedor Emelianenko in the UFC only after his first social security check bounces.)

Hopkins participated in a chat with Michael David Smith, and in addition to fielding questions about his age, he took one on the shoulder about another kind of fighting.

“I don't like the UFC,” he said. “At least I don't like people matching it up with boxing. They're two different sports and I don't like it when people compare the UFC and boxing because the UFC is not boxing. Those guys are fighting like a street fight, although I know they train very hard and there's a strategy to it. But I just don't like it when they try to compare that to the sweet science of boxing. I respect what they do, but boxing is totally the opposite from the UFC and MMA. They're just totally opposites.”

It’s a step up from Hopkins’ 2009 claims that mixed-fighters were “in panties,” had no skills whatsoever and were essentially filming a “porno,” but not by much. Boxing, “the sweet science,” has been romanticized as being a mathematical formula. At the very top level, there is a grace to it that should impress anyone -- but it’s hardly the only kind of prizefight that operates on multiple levels. Hopkins appears to seethe at that idea. It reeks of someone offering an opinion from out of his ass at velocity.