Boxer Bernard Hopkins didn't exactly win over too many people when he randomly decided to call Donovan McNabb's "blackness" (for lack of a better term) into question. His defense of his comments in a panel on CSN Philadelphia won't exactly win over anyone either.
Hopkins essentially says that he doesn't like McNabb because he wasn't friendly to him back in 2004 when he visited the Eagles' locker room. Then, he launched into a rant about how he can see through people because he is a boxer, or something. Yeah, it was a doozy.
Anyway, Hopkins began by talking about how he visited the Eagles' locker room right when Terrell Owens got there in 2004. He talked about how Owens and most of the other guys were nice to him, but McNabb was "hiding and waiting" with a couple coaches until Hopkins left. At least that's how Hopkins saw it.
"It reminded me of being at Chestnut Hill," Hopkins said, noting a rich suburb of Philadelphia. "When you go back to Chestnut Hill in the early 80s, you get looked at funny. I felt that way. I felt like I was back up in Chestnut Hill, where I'm being looked at like, 'Am I supposed to be in this neighborhood, or am I supposed to be in this locker room.' It hurt my ego. I felt like everybody had given me love. [Owens] had just come to town not too long ago and I love his heart and I love his demeanor. He got issues, but we all do. And I'm seeing [McNabb] hiding and waiting, peeking out every now and then until we leave."
The obvious follow-up question for Hopkins here is: does this really give you the right to inject race into the discussion? Apparently, it does for Hopkins, because he can see through people. He said he could see that McNabb couldn't handle the pressure with anything, and closed with this thought.
"It's like instincts I have from growing up in the streets," he said. "To have the ability to understand, because most haven't walked that road and been in that block, where you can look at somebody and sense something, but not judge them, and have the experience to feel and see what they're actually thinking and what they don't have in them."
"During my 23-year boxing career, where I have to be mono el mono, where I have to look at a guy and see that he speaks with confidence and doesn't really mean it, that is something I have," he continued. "[I have] the ability to look through a man's soul and watch his actions, and see if he really means what he really wants. That separates the average from the greats."
He then launched into a freedom of speech rant and a "people think boxers are stupid" rant before finishing with the thought that Michael Vick is better for the Eagles.
"Michael Vick, though, he has the DNA. We have a better chance of winning the Super Bowl in the next five years than we had in the last five years."
And now we see what this is really all about.