Hopkins vs Trinidad 2001: The Flag, the Delay After 9/11 and the Night Hopkins Became Undisputed

On September 29, 2001, eighteen days after the attacks on the World Trade Center, Bernard Hopkins walked into Madison Square Garden as the underdog against the unbeaten Puerto Rican idol Félix Trinidad. He left as the first undisputed middleweight champion since Marvin Hagler, having outboxed Trinidad for eleven rounds and dropped him in the twelfth.

Don King's Four-Man Middleweight Tournament

The fight was the final of a bracket assembled by Don King Productions and billed as the Middleweight World Championship Series. Four men were entered: the IBF champion Bernard Hopkins, the WBC champion Keith Holmes, the WBA champion William Joppy and Félix Trinidad, who had moved up from the lighter divisions. The winner would collect the three major belts, the vacant Ring Magazine title at 160 pounds and a trophy commissioned in the name of Sugar Ray Robinson.

Both semifinals were held at Madison Square Garden. On April 14, 2001, Hopkins beat Holmes by unanimous decision, with scores of 118-109, 117-110 and 119-108, adding the WBC belt to his IBF title. On May 12, Trinidad knocked Joppy down three times and stopped him in the fifth round. That set up a meeting between a 36-year-old from Philadelphia with a record of 39-2-1 and a 28-year-old from Fajardo who had never lost in 40 professional fights.

The Flag in New York and the Riot in San Juan

Hopkins chose provocation as his promotional strategy, and he aimed it at the thing Trinidad's supporters cared about most. At a news conference in New York in early July, he took a small Puerto Rican flag away from Trinidad, according to an Associated Press report carried by ESPN. The New York crowd jeered, but the event stayed under control.

Two days later the tour reached San Juan, where around 5,000 people filled a basketball arena, waving hand-held flags and chanting Trinidad's nickname, Tito. Hopkins took the microphone and told them it would be a sad day for Puerto Rico when they watched their hero fall. Then he grabbed a Puerto Rican flag again and threw it on the floor. Trinidad answered that the flag was the one thing he would not let anyone touch or throw down, and warned Hopkins he would pay a high price.

The room did not wait for the fight. Fans surged toward the stage, throwing bottles and chairs and kicking the podium. Police separated the two fighters, put them in different locker rooms and escorted them out of the building. The AP reported that no one was arrested. From that day on, Hopkins was cast as the villain of the promotion, and the fight was set for September 15 in New York.

September 11 and a Two-Week Delay

Four days before the original date, hijacked airliners hit the twin towers. Hopkins was in New York that morning. In a 2021 retrospective for Boxing News, Steve Bunce wrote that Hopkins had been due to train at a gym near the towers that day and saw both planes strike. The British writer recorded Hopkins saying that after the second plane he forgot about the fight entirely.

The card was pushed back two weeks to September 29. According to Bunce, King refused to move the fight out of the city to Las Vegas or Detroit, arguing that New York deserved it. Hopkins kept his own symbolism: he turned up in a black bandanna bearing the word WAR, part of a batch of 500 that Bunce says had been made before the attacks, and he declined to take it off despite concerns about how it would look.

The money reflected who was expected to win. ESPN reported that Trinidad was paid $9 million and Hopkins $2.5 million, and Boxing News noted that bookmakers made the unbeaten Puerto Rican the favourite. At the weigh-in Hopkins came in at 157 pounds and Trinidad at 158.5.

Eleven Rounds of the Jab

A crowd of 19,075 filled the Garden, according to the AP fight report published by ESPN. The opening two rounds were cautious, both men measuring distance. From the third round on, Hopkins took control with a steady jab and constant movement, refusing to stand where Trinidad's left hook could find him. Trinidad's best spell came in the sixth, when he pushed Hopkins to the ropes and landed hooks, but the seventh slowed again and the pattern returned.

By the tenth round Trinidad was throwing in bursts that left him visibly drained, and Hopkins punished him with heavy counters that shook him before the bell. In the eleventh Trinidad's legs looked unsteady while Hopkins appeared fresh. The CompuBox figures cited by ESPN show how one-sided it had become: Hopkins landed 260 of 653 punches over the night, Trinidad 129 of 329.

The Right Hand in the Twelfth

Hopkins did not coast through the final round. He landed a series of hard shots and then a big right hand to the chin that put Trinidad down. The count had reached nine, according to both the AP and Boxing News, when his father and trainer, Félix Trinidad Sr., came into the ring to end it, and referee Steve Smoger waved the fight off.

Sources differ by a few seconds on the official time. The AP report on ESPN gives 1:22 of the twelfth round, while Wikipedia and other later accounts list 1:18. There is no disagreement about the scorecards: at the stoppage Hopkins led 109-100 on the card of Don Ackerman and 107-102 on those of Stanley Christodoulou and Anek Hongtongkam. The AP's own card had it 108-101.

The result raised Hopkins to 40-2-1 with 29 knockouts and handed Trinidad the first defeat of his career, ending a run of 20 straight wins in championship fights. Hopkins, never one to undersell himself, told reporters he had wanted to show his greatness and believed he had done it only halfway.

A Champion Who Was Not Welcome Back

The victory was not universally welcomed. Within days, Hopkins's adviser Lou DiBella told ESPN that King had called him to say the Garden did not want Hopkins back. The Garden's boxing chief, Kevin Wynne, denied any ban, saying nobody had presented the arena with a Hopkins fight. DiBella argued that the Garden was unhappy because the upset had spoiled plans for a Trinidad fight with Roy Jones Jr. Hopkins's response was characteristically defiant: "My whole life, people have been trying to knock me down. The Garden should be ashamed," he said, as quoted by ESPN.

Years later DiBella offered a verdict on the performance itself, telling Boxing News he could not recall a great fighter at his peak being beaten so completely. The Ring named Hopkins its Fighter of the Year for 2001. A rematch was discussed but never happened. Hopkins went on to defend the undisputed title for several more years, beating William Joppy and Oscar De La Hoya among others, before he finally lost it to Jermain Taylor.

For Trinidad, the night in New York ended an aura of invincibility built over nearly a decade. For Hopkins, then 36 and long overlooked, it was the fight that changed how the sport saw him, achieved in a wounded city at the end of a promotion he had deliberately turned into a war.

Sources

• Félix Trinidad vs. Bernard Hopkins, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
• Middleweight World Championship Series, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
• Hopkins throws Puerto Rican flag; fans riot (Associated Press), ESPN, July 11, 2001
• Hopkins stops Trinidad in 12th to unify middleweight titles (Associated Press), ESPN, September 29, 2001
• Garden denies barring Hopkins after Trinidad win, ESPN, October 2, 2001
• The Perfect Wake: Hopkins vs Trinidad, September 29, 2001, Steve Bunce, Boxing News, September 29, 2021
• Flashback Friday: Bernard Hopkins vs. Felix Trinidad, Round By Round Boxing