A CUT ABOVE: In the locker room after Saturday night's fight, Hopkins' trainer Brother Naazim Richardson removes tape from the retiring champion's hands.

So with a look in his eye that would put a stone-abbed sweet scientist down for the count if it were a body shot, Hopkins climbed atop the bottom ropes, leaned against the turnbuckle, hoisted his new belt in the air and let out the caterwaul of a conqueror.

"Un-be-liev-able!" Hopkins yelled to nobody, and everybody, in particular. He then pointed to the belt he'd just taken away from Tarver, a trash-talker who bet a quarter million that he'd knock the 41-year-old "Executioner" out before the end of the fifth round of the last fight of his career. Then, he poked his own chest. "Half man. Half amazing. A-maz-ing."

X MAN: As his date with destiny approached, Hopkins told the world he'd end his career in historic fashion by defeating light heavyweight champion (and Rocky Balboa villain) Antonio Tarver. As a partisan Atlantic City crowd urged the retiring pugilist along with "B Hop" chants, Hopkins manhandled his foe, forcing Tarver's face to swell with vicious combinations in the later rounds. The outcome, just like underdog Hopkins said before the fight and after the final bell, was never in question. (The fight will be rebroadcast on HBO this Saturday.)

Antonio Tarver

Nobody could disagree.

When they sit down to write the Bernard Hopkins chapter in boxing's history book, the record should reflect that he finally abdicated his throne about 90 minutes later, at 1:29 a.m., Sunday, June 11, 2006.

He did so following a celebratory press conference in a cinder block of a backstage room in Boardwalk Hall where the paint was chipping off the walls and the rusty chains that pull the curtain to the ceiling dangled overhead. He did so surrounded by family, friends, fans, future business partners, the humbled boxer he just defeated and "Mr. V," the third-grade teacher who proudly carried a championship belt and sighed how happy he was that the kid got out of the game with his faculties intact. And he did so, without a mark on his body to indicate he just spent 12 rounds in the ring with a 174-pound brawler, by saying, "I'm done. I'm done. I don't need to risk anything else. There's nothing left to do. … My daughter's almost 7. I'd like to know who her teachers are."

It was as stirring a scene as Philadelphia sports allow, one that rendered the no-cheering-on-press-row tradition laughable.

Hopkins went out higher than anybody imagined he could mere hours earlier. The one-time street tough defied the odds by staying out of prison after a multiyear stint. Decades later, he took to a pay-per-view-ad-laden stage after accomplishing something that even his idol, the legendary "Sugar" Ray Robinson couldn't; Hopkins was now the first middleweight to pack on pounds and win a light heavyweight championship—ever.

He marked the transition out of being a bragging boxer by wearing stripes. They were yellow and blue, on a Polo shirt that faded next to the diamond-drenched watch he'd been presented as a retirement gift. Never one to hold back, he thanked everybody from reporter to late mother for their support over the years and laid out what he considers his legacy.

"I've eliminated any doubt that anybody could muster up that I don't deserve to be a Hall of Famer," he proudly, and accurately, declared as Tarver stoically sat two chairs away, his swollen eyes hidden behind sunglasses. "I care what people say about me; maybe I shouldn't. … The money didn't motivate me. It was about fighting for history."

Of course, he conceded, the money mattered some; when asked by an HBO analyst if he'd fight again if offered $20 million to do so, a garrulous Hopkins noted that he'd return from death for that kind of loot. (By Monday, he was on Philly radio promising that when he said he career was over, he meant it.)

As most of the reporters filed out of the room, Hopkins stayed on stage talking to fans about anything they wanted, posing for pictures with those who wanted lifelong evidence of the night that just was. Not once did he seem bored. Not once did he try to cut the conversation short until a handler finally pulled him away. Physically.

So, he climbed a few steps down from the stage and entered a new life. When he takes off today for Vegas to watch the last man to defeat him fight, he'll no longer be Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins, boxer; he'll be Bernard Hopkins, boxing promoter, husband, father.

And, more importantly, he'll forever be a man whose graciousness and professional prowess proved, if only for one night, that boxing isn't merely a cesspool of corruption. That the sweet science which many call a dying sport is one of the rare outlets that offer the opportunity to grab the most elusive prize of this human experience: total redemption.