"Wherever Allah wants me is the perfect place. Whatever he wants done, I will thank him and pray on my knees as often as I can in rejoicing. My thing is I didn't want the bull to hurt Bernard; I didn't want Bernard to hurt the bull," stated world-class trainer Naazim Richardson, who shared his thoughts on future Hall of Famer Bernard Hopkins getting knockout out by light heavyweight contender Joe Smith Jr. in his final fight. Check out what else Richardson had to say as he talked about the performance of Hopkins and much more.
NAAZIM RICHARDSON ON BERNARD HOPKINS GETTING KNOCKED OUT BY JOE SMITH JR.:
"I finally got caught up on some stuff and I heard some offensive statements, even from John [David Jackson]. John made a statement that when he was with us, he orchestrated the plan for Tarver and Kelly Pavlik and Bernard wanted to get back to that, and that's not true. That's not true at all and I don't know why John would do that. John don't need to do that. I was a little taken back by that, but like I said, nothing that these guys do surprise me. Maybe Allah didn't want me to be a part of that. And from what I heard he was doing in the gym, I probably would have gotten fired anyway because I would have spoke out against it. That probably would have got me shipped out. Couple of people told me they saw him getting touched with everything that was thrown in the gym, but nobody is going to say nothing. Bernard will give you a long speech about why he got touched in the gym and by the time he finished talking, it'll be right. I'm just glad he didn't get seriously hurt.
I hadn't seen a lot of Joe Smith Jr. prior to last night and I still don't know. And here is why I don't know. We going to get the opportunity to know because I'm going to tell you how they gonna do it. John David Jackson going to run over to the other corner and they gonna call Kovalev up and put Joe Smith in front of Kovalev and Kovalev going to knock him into the balcony somewhere and that's going to be even more disrespect to Bernard Hopkins. They got guys fighting now to get to Joe Smith. You're going to have guys come up, guys like Jesse Hart, going to want to come up and fight Joe Smith. We didn't know what was left in the tank with X. We hadn't seen him since the Kovalev fight and we don't know what he was doing in the gym.
I hope he finds what he's looking for. I'm still not going to badmouth him or anything like that. You can stand over me while I'm down with a stroke and badmouth me, but with the will of Allah, I'll stand up from a stroke and run across the room in the long run. I don't mind if you kick me while I'm down because I plan on getting up, but I refuse to kick a person when they're at their lowest moment. That's why I wanted to get with you before the fight and say some things because I didn't want the end result, no matter how that fight ended, to draw my first comments. That's why I got with you before the fight took place. And like I told you prior to the fight, it doesn't surprise me at all because that's the type of dude he is and nobody over there would step up and say nothing to him because who can?"
BE SURE TO CHECK BACK SOON FOR MUCH MORE WITH WORLD-CLASS TRAINER NAAZIM RICHARDSON
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