Young fighter battles cancer to the end with Bernard Hopkins

You won’t find Shaun Negler’s name in the FightFax database, the official record-keeping service of professional boxing.

There are no tapes of any of his memorable wins or stories of epic triumphs left behind. That’s because they don’t exist. He was robbed of a career in the sport he loved.

But none other than Bernard Hopkins, one of the greatest fighters of this or any generation, will tell you that he hasn’t met a tougher, or more courageous, fighter than Shaun Negler.

The improbable friendship between the long-time middleweight champion and the 18-year-old who worshipped him officially ended at 12:15 p.m. EDT on Oct. 23, 2008, when Negler could fight no more and succumbed to a 2½ year battle with cancer.

But Hopkins, who first met Negler in 2006 when he learned that the then-16-year-old had a deadly form of cancer, isn’t ready to accept that his friend is gone.

“This kid’s soul is still with us,” said Hopkins, who served as a pall bearer at Negler’s funeral in Philadelphia on Oct. 29. “His spirit lives inside of me and inside a lot of the people I met over these last couple of years.”

Hopkins said that for as much as he may have given to Shaun and the Neglers, he received much more in return.

“This was a kid who had every reason to feel sorry for himself, who had every reason to give up, and he never once would give in and he never once looked at the dark side of anything,” Hopkins said. “He looked at death and said, ‘I want to live. And I’m going to make the most of what I have.’ And that’s what we have to do while we’re here on this Earth. Take what you have and do the best you can with it. Look at what this kid was dealt and look what he did with it.

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