The middleweight boxing legend famously knocked Oscar De La Hoya out with a precise body shot that took him out inside the distance.
It was a fight that Hopkins showed his middleweight dominance in.
In a career that saw him still hold the record for most consecutive defenses of the middleweight title ever (20).
Recently speaking to Andre Ward on his show ‘All The Smoke Fight’ Hopkins disclosed how much he really got paid for that fight and some other bits:
“Yeah, I paid 90% of it. I had a mouthpiece, but at the end of the day, I had to pull the trigger. That means I got all the information I needed to have: First, what are they paying me, guaranteed? Second, what are they giving me for foreign sales rights? I wanted to dig into the foreign sales rights, sponsorship, gate. (Ward then said) Did you share in that, or did Oscar say, “It’s your money, man”? (Hopkins replied) No, I shared in that. Top Rank did the fight. I got a pay-per-view cut. I didn’t share the gate—all that stuff comes with the promotion. But as far as the pay-per-view numbers, I shared pretty decent money from that. Not millions, but I got some decent money because that kicked in after it hit a certain number of pay-per-view buys. (My guarantee was) Career-high—$10 million.”
Good money in that time as De La Hoya was the big pay per view star and cash cow back then.
That was the guarantee, he would have made more with the other streams after that of course.
The fight was all the way back in 2004 in Vegas and in many ways it opened up huge opportunities for street fighting and boxing champion legend Bernard Hopkins after, who became much more known then.