Bernard Hopkins

Who is Bernard Hopkins?

Bernard Humphrey Hopkins, Jr. is an American boxer and current IBF, WBA and IBA light-heavyweight world champion. At 49 years of age, he became the oldest boxer ever to win a world title, defend a world title and also unify a weight division.

He is widely known for his career in the middleweight class, where he held at least one of its championships from 1994 until 2005. Earning the International Boxing Federation's belt first, he unified the titles of three of boxing's major sanctioning bodies in 2001 by winning the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council titles. Having added The Ring middleweight championship to his resume, Hopkins became the first middleweight to have held all four of what are considered the major belts when he won the World Boxing Organization's championship from Oscar De La Hoya in 2004.

Hopkins defended a world middleweight title a record 20 times before losing it in 2005, and is considered one of the greatest middleweight champions of all time. The Ring ranked him #3 on their list of the "10 best middleweight title holders of the last 50 years."