Hopkins’ anger at Jones real

LAS VEGAS – It’s easy to imagine someone as patient and precise as Bernard Hopkins putting those traits to good use in a profession outside of boxing.

The same steady hands that have been so effective when balled into fists might have made Hopkins the maker of fine Swiss time pieces, or maybe a cutter of diamonds and other precious stones. In his leisure time, the man known as “The Executioner” probably would be a whiz at painstakingly assembling miniature sailing ships inside a bottle or piecing together giant, 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzles.

In the ring, Hopkins long has been a proponent of the adage that haste makes waste. And why not? At 45, he never has been stopped, cut or even taken a serious beating. His impenetrable defense is on a par with that of the 1985 Chicago Bears, and his attention to detail has allowed him to systematically break down opponents bit by bit instead of going for the big hit, which really isn’t his game in any case.

“You have to know your craft in this sport,” Hopkins’ trainer, Brother Naazim Richardson, said of his fighter’s death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach. “Bernard is a wrecking machine. Bernard is not a knockout puncher who gets you in one shot. Bernard ruins guys, but he takes his time doing it.”

It is that Bernard Hopkins (50-5-1, 32 KOs), the one who dispassionately goes about his business with laser-beam focus, who is a 4-1 favorite over the faded Roy Jones Jr. (54-6, 40 KOs) tonight in their pay-per-view rematch at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. But that might not be the Hopkins who answers the opening bell.

Seventeen years after he lost a unanimous decision to Jones, on May 22, 1993, Hopkins is older, wiser and maybe even better than he was that night at RFK Stadium. He was the ex-convict from North Philadelphia who was a 28-year-old ring neophyte and possibly intimidated by Jones, the 1988 Olympic hero, and the fact he was appearing in his first title bout and on the sort of big stage he never had been afforded.

Hopkins-Jones II had since been proposed more often than marriage offers to Elizabeth Taylor and always, until now, the more ardent suitor, Hopkins, was left with a bouquet of wilted roses and broken promises. By and by, Jones became an object of Hopkins’ frustration and, eventually, hatred.

It is that seething desire to pummel and destroy Jones, as the young Mike Tyson used to pummel and destroy a succession of terrified victims, that perhaps offers Jones his best chance for avoiding such a thrashing, and maybe even to pull off an upset.

“I want Roy to be able to remember this beating I am about to give him for making me wait so long,” Hopkins said, the contempt in his voice palpable and, this time, not just a gimmick to boost PPV sales. “It’s all about healing a 17-year wound.”

Jones is steadfast in his pronouncements that he was a better fighter than Hopkins in 1993, he’s better now and will always be.

“He tried everything and none of it worked,” Jones said in recalling his first go-round with Hopkins. “He couldn’t get away from my jab. This time, he’ll be a little different, a little smarter. He’s not the risk-taker he used to be. He wants to lay it all on the line now.”

In a psychological battle of guys who are used to getting under an opponent’s skin, Jones has taken a double-dare-you tact and asserted that it was Hopkins, not he, who prevented the rematch from happening for so long.

“I can’t blame that man for not wanting to fight me until he thought my career was over,” Jones said. “The only reason he’s fighting me now is because he thinks I’m done, washed up. He feels there’s no way I can survive 12 rounds with him. But he’s wrong.”