Bernard Hopkins Talks McNabb Comments, Tries In Vain To Make Himself Look Better

by Glenn Davis | 7:45 pm, May 27th, 2011

Boxer Bernard Hopkins said dumb things about Donovan McNabb. There’s no way around it. He questioned the legitimacy of McNabb’s blackness, going as far as to dismiss McNabb’s skin tone as merely “suntan.” He talked about McNabb in such a way that Mike Freeman of CBS (in the midst of ripping Hopkins) said, “Hopkins called McNabb a house negro.” Pundits from Mike Wilbon to Rush effin’ Limbaugh leapt to McNabb’s defense, so clearly was Hopkins in the wrong.

But here’s something else about Hopkins: he’s a really good boxer. Not long after he made those ill-conceived comments about McNabb, he defeated Jean Pascal for the light heavyweight championship – and Hopkins is 46. It’s an amazing achievement, and thanks to it, he got another chance to speak his mind – and maybe redeem himself a bit for his McNabb remarks – on ESPN’s First Take this morning.

Alas, Hopkins didn’t make things any better. Oh, he tried, but he glossed over the fact that he questioned McNabb’s blackness. Hopkins acted like the issue was that he didn’t think McNabb is such a great quarterback. (Oh, and the fact that his anti-McNabb sentiment supposedly stemmed from a perceived snub by McNabb years ago). Rather, he talked about how to truly become great, one must have the drive that comes from a hardscrabble upbringing. McNabb talk starts at 4:20 below:

It all came off to us like skirting around the major issues. People didn’t care that Hopkins doesn’t think McNabb is the greatest quarterback – they cared that he questioned McNabb’s credentials as an African-American man, as if there’s only one way to legitimately be black. And when he said McNabb “is a frontrunner when it comes to being great”…um, what? We guess Hopkins deserves some credit for revisiting his remarks at all, but we can’t praise him too much when his remarks struck us as little more than cheap spin.