Hopkins Allegedly Owes Back Child Support, Arrested At Weigh-In

The eight participants in Top Rank’s Latin Fury 9 card weighed in without controversy Friday afternoon, but that doesn’t mean the weigh-in was incident-free. 

As he was en route to the Versailles room to scale in for his undercard bout against Hector Munoz, former junior welterweight challenger Demetrius Hopkins was grabbed by police, who arrested him on an outstanding warrant charging back child support.

Hopkins (28-1-1) was cuffed on the spot and led away in irons to the local hoosegow. The New Jersey Commission, holding out hope that he might make bail, extended the grace period until 6:30 last night, but the boxer failed to weigh in for what would have been his first ring outing since dropping a split decision to Kendall Holt last December.

A Top Rank source said that he had been told Hopkins owed in excess of $28,090 in back child support. He was scheduled to earn $25,000 for fighting Munoz (19-2-1), a Danny Romero-trained boxer from Albuquerque.

Normally we are not favorably disposed toward cutting alleged Deadbeat Dads much slack, but the handling of this one didn’t seem to make much since. When a guy is 24 hours away from drawing his first paycheck of the year, you’d imagine the sensible thing to do would be to wait and arrest him AFTER the fight.

Munoz went through the formality of weighing in anyway, just to make sure he would be paid, and came in at 145. 

Champion Juan Manuel Lopez weighed in half a pound under the 122-pound limit for his WBO title fight against Cameroon-born, Canadian-based Olivier Lontchi, who weighed 120. 

Who knew Michael Jackson was big in Cameroon, too? Lontchi, who describes himself as a “lifetime fan” of the late artist, plans to moonwalk his way into the ring for the title bout as a tribute to Jackson, who died on Thursday, after apparently getting a shot of Demerol from a personal physician.