From the Green Room: Knowing When to Say When
In “Pulp Fiction,” one of Marcellus Wallace’s pearls of wisdom is that “Boxers don’t have an old timers day.” Well, at least they didn’t until now. Because on Saturday, Roy Jones Jr. and Bernard Hopkins will face each other at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The 41-year old Jones and the 45-year old Hopkins will finally have a rematch that is 17 years in the making. I’d love to have the oxygen concession at that fight.
Even the great Iron Mike Tyson called it quits at 39, or at least his trainer did, when Kevin McBride wore him out like a vinyl copy of Sergeant Pepper. He finished with a 50-6 record, and segued right into movies, nailing a star turn in “The Hangover,” where he performed what was possibly the greatest rendition of Phil Collins’s “In The Air” ever captured on film.
Perhaps it’s time for Messrs. Jones and Hopkins to consider signing with ICM before it’s too late, and they wander off into Leon Spinks/Jerry Cooney territory. Both of those fighters wound up staying one bout too long, and now know their respective brain cells by name, as they spend most of their free time sitting in a corner trying to master an Etch-A-Sketch. I knew Spinks was in trouble when before the second Ali fight, he attempted rhyming like the champ: “I will hit him so hard, I will be his jinx…because that’s my name….Leon.”
I think Mr. Jones especially has a potentially promising career in film. I can easily see him playing the part of Captain America’s nemesis “Cottonmouth” in the Avengers movie, or Bilbo Baggins’s next door neighbor in the upcoming “Hobbit” remake. Mr. Hopkins however, seems ripe for the aforementioned Marcellus Wallace himself, should Quentin Tarrantino ever decide to do a prequel of his masterpiece...or even the fighter that Butch winds up killing in the ring just before he meets The Gimp.
That is, if he doesn’t get killed in the ring himself on Saturday.
It must be difficult getting the footwork right when you’re using a walker.