I noticed in the Monday headlines that Bernard Hopkins and Jean Pascal had a press conference in Montreal to promote their rematch after the controversial decision that went the way of Pascal in Quebec City a few months back. The two combatants directed punches at one another and had to be separated by security and handlers. Sad as it is to say, it’s usually par for the course at a boxing press conference. I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that it was staged and was a way for people to be coerced into watching the fight.
The only reason I wanted to write about this though is because I was thinking back to the interview that Lee and I did with Bernard Hopkins just days after their first fight. I think it’s the interview that I get asked about the most because of who the guest was, how poorly it came off for Hopkins and us. and because of how awkward it was to conduct and to listen to. I guess I’m just trying to kill a bunch of birds with one stone by telling you what was going through my mind throughout that whole process. For those who didn’t hear the interview or don’t really care for boxing, at least it’s a story.
The interview was set up a couple of days after the Saturday night fight. We received an e-mail from someone representing Bernard that asked if we would be interested in having him on to talk about the fight. As a boxing fanatic and having watched the fight, I was ecstatic to go after the opportunity. Lee doesn’t watch it as much, but knew the name and knew how much Hopkins has accomplished. It was a go and we worked it out.
The day of the show, we open the show with the usual banter and get to talking about the interview. Lee had asked earlier off-air about what kind of interview it might be. Off-air and on-air, I talk about smart he is and how good of a communicator he can be and that we could have a great interview ahead of us. For some reason though, I had this feeling that we were going to be let down. I saw his TV work on ESPN Friday Night Fights and thought he was excellent, but some sort of radio intuition kicked in.
Sure enough, the interview starts and right from the start, Bernard takes control of the interview and tells people how he got robbed and that he should be the champ and Pascal has no business walking around with the belt. That was to be expected, but the fact that he talked over both Lee and I and seemed to be in his own world did us no favours. It made the interview a complete disaster.
There’s a certain formula that goes with radio interviews. You try to make it as conversational as you can, but the main element is question/answer/question/answer and everyone is generally OK with that. I’ve always believed that the “formula” should only really be a base and that the best interviews are the ones that just turn into normal conversation. But enough about radio theory. This one had no semblance of formula at all and had me completely on edge about where it was going. It’s an interview that I’ll never forget. It wasn’t the best 10 minutes I’ve ever done, but it’s one that helped me learn quite a lot.
It’s interesting that as I write this, I’ve come to realize that it may have been unrealistic to expect the fighter that has never lived his life in a formulaic way to give you a formulaic kind of interview. It’s part of the charm of Bernard Hopkins, part of the mystique and a huge reason why as a boxing fan, you love him or you hate him. All he really cares about is whether you watch him and pay to see him. I wonder how many will when he fights again in Montreal…