Leading with his head

Bernard Hopkins will be two months shy of his 50th birthday when he steps into the ring in Atlantic City tonight to face the hard-hitting Sergey Kovalev for the WBA/WBO/IBF light-heavyweight belts. What does it take to be a world-champion boxer at age 49?

“There’s a god of this world,” Bernard Hopkins was saying. ‘‘Some say the mass media is the god of this world. It’s like a song, like that ‘Happy.’ They shoved it down my throat. At first I hated it. Why I got to be happy? My dog died! But it ended up being one of my favourite songs. They put one of those songs out every 20 years. No matter how bad your life is, no matter how legitimate your reasons for being upset, they say, ‘Don’t worry, be happy.’

Song’s only three minutes, then you stop being happy. The way they control human beings, like cattle. How do a sheepdog keep 50 or 100 sheeps in order? I’m watching a dog keep a herd on TV, and I’m thinking that’s the way the system got most human beings: ‘Eat this. Drink that.’”