Hopkins plays the race card (again) as he cranks up Calzaghe contest

Bernard Hopkins played the race card again in the build-up to Saturday's light-heavyweight clash with Joe Calzaghe, telling reporters: 'It's always a race issue when it's black versus white.'

While less explosive than his declaration to Calzaghe in December — 'I would never lose to a white person' — this latest proclamation stirred a pot most Americans would rather see covered and locked in a cupboard.

In a city of jacks and aces, race is the one card sport prefers to see kept in the dealer's pack: an absurd hope, in reality, given boxing's ethnic make-up and its association with inner-city poverty.

'The Executioner's' monologue on skin colour and American society contained plenty of sound logic. He singled out the odious phrase 'Great White Hope' from the post-Rocky Marciano heavyweight era and attempted to explain that young black fighters from his native Philadelphia are obliged to see their sport through the lens of race.

Hopkins said: 'I'm up for this fight for a lot of personal reasons. To me it's a cultural fight. Ask some black athletes about culture, about competition. Don't ask the guy in the suburbs, don't ask the black guy who lives up there when his father's a lawyer, because he's out of touch.

'Go to Martin Luther King Boulevard — they've got one in every American city — and there's guys like me living there. Ask them what B-Hop said and what he means and what he or she thinks about it.

'Everybody at this (press conference) table has asked: "When are we going to see a great white hope?" A great white hope. So, what is that?

'Why has it been so important to see a white (heavyweight) champion if race doesn't play a part in everything?

'Are y'all idiots, man, or do you just want me to say it? I have something that was given to me on the day of my birth: courage to say what others won't say. Martin Luther King had that, Gandhi had that.'

The flaw in his reasoning is that Calzaghe is Welsh of Italian stock. He inhabits the valleys around Newbridge in Wales, not Wall Street or the leafy suburbs of Philly. It's hard to see how Britain's undisputed super-middleweight world champion is complicit in the American inequalities Hopkins rails against.

Equally, as the millionaire vice-president of Golden Boy Promotions, which might as well be called Pugilism Inc, Hopkins could be said to have more in common these days with affluent society than the ghetto, which he escaped many years ago.

But there is much confusion here about who comes from where. At the final pre-fight conference Hopkins announced: 'It's England v the U.S!' Up on the dais Calzaghe muttered: 'Wales.'

His father, Enzo, then presented the 43-year-old Hopkins with a stick, to which the home fighter responded amiably: 'I've got a rocking chair from (Antonio) Tarver and now a walking cane.'

Hopkins is in impeccable condition, but Calzaghe exudes confidence — verbally, at least. 'Bernard has never been stopped and that's something I think I can do,' he said. 'I'm going to cut 1,000 punches down to 500 or 600 and make them more powerful and punish him. If I bring my A-game against anyone in the world, I win.

'Bernard had to go to prison to be hard. To me that's a sign of weakness. I don't have to. He's been to prison, big deal. In the end you're going to see a grown man cry.'