Contrary to women, who can only lose their honour (through infidelity), a “real” man must fight for it–he must use violence to achieve glory and public recognition. Pursuing masculinity is therefore an exposure to vulnerability. Most importantly, masculinity is constructed in front of and for other men and against femininity because, what men fear most is being feminine.

–Margrethe Silberschmidt

Saturday night’s main event provided one of those rare fights that will stay with the memory longer than the ordinary news cycle, longer than the heated debate that follows any upset in a prize fight, and longer than the momentary impression that, say, a crushing knockout or brutal slugfest leave on the mind’s eye. This is because, at the age of 43 (almost 44), Bernard Hopkins, 4:1 underdog Bernard Hopkins, turned in a performance that no one, not even those who saw Hopkins winning the fight, expected. He looked vastly superior to the boring, fatigued fighter who lost to Joe Calzaghe in April, and, one on of the biggest stages of an already legendary career, thoroughly defeated and humiliated one of the ring’s rising stars. Two days out from the fight, the images that stay with me include the sight of Hopkins dancing around a befuddled Pavlik, landing at will in front of an Atlantic City crowd that was one part ecstatic, one part shocked; the look on Kelly Pavlik’s face in between rounds as he began to grapple with the reality of his inability to even make a competitive fight against the vastly superior Hopkins; and the image of Hopkins standing on the ropes after his victory, staring down the members of press row–every one of them, one by one–to punish them for their doubts and criticism. Although, in truth, Hopkins probably needed those doubters to motivate himself to turn in the performance that he did. In sum, Hopkins’s victory not only pushed him back into the discussion as one of the sport’s top pound-for-pound fighters, it also announced to the world that Bernard Hopkins is one of the most compelling athletes in the world today, from any country, in any sport. Boxing does not get the mainstream media coverage that it deserves (partly because of its own faults), but if it did, what Hopkins did to Kelly Pavlik would make the achievements of overrated, past-their-prime stars like Brett Favre or Dana Torres look ridiculous by comparison.

Two days out, I find myself still wondering how everyone could have been so wrong about Hopkins-Pavlik. Not only wrong about who would win, but utterly wrong about how convincing the win would be. We didn’t just get the result wrong, we got the entire narrative wrong. Hopkins did not defeat Pavlik through trickery or bullshit, he won by beating the crap out of him for twelve consecutive rounds. He was seventeen years older, yet he looked younger, stronger, faster, quicker. Everything everyone said and wrote about this fight going in was wrong. These mistakes will happen more frequently, I suppose, in a sport where one only has to be great on one specific night, rather than over and over again, as in baseball or basketball. This gets to the argument about sample sizes, of course, which is a tired argument, but more importantly, completely inadequate for explaining Saturday’s result. Given the way the fight progressed, I have 100 percent confidence that, should they fight each other under the same conditions 99 more times, Hopkins would win all 99 of them, some by knockout. Pavlik simply looked like he had no business being anywhere near Bernard Hopkins in the ring, even though Pavlik twice defeated a man, Jermaine Taylor, who had himself twice (narrowly) defeated Hopkins.

This is where prize fights can take on an almost Zen quality: they simply are what they are. There is something completely different and transcendently unique about the sport itself that resists prognostication. When a fighter strips down half-naked and steps into a ring with another half-naked fighter in front of thousands of fans and millions watching on television, there is something very different going on than what we see in other sporting events. Fighters want to hurt each other badly; in an almost ideal sense, they want to symbolically (if not actually) kill each other. Because a fight is not just a test of skill or fortitude, it is also a challenge to one’s masculinity. As such, fighters stands perched on a narrow balance beam; the slightest misstep and he can tumble to his death. On Saturday night, Hopkins didn’t just walk the balance beam, he danced across it, in a display of rare ability, yes, but also supreme will and confidence that will forever define his remarkable career. We are all still waiting to catch our breaths.