Bernard Hopkins refuses to go gently into the twilight of retirement.

A major prizefighting provocateur for two decades, Hopkins, now an age-resistant 43, will face 36-year-old Joe Calzaghe on April 19 in Las Vegas in what looks to be the final bout of his brilliant career.

Unless something changes.

Considered by many to be the greatest middleweight of his era, Hopkins, who set the division record with 20 title defenses, had promised his mother that he would not fight beyond age 41. In June 2006, he moved up to 174 pounds to challenge former light-heavyweight champ Antonio Tarver, and then insisted that the fight would be his swan song.

Hopkins ended up manhandling Tarver and winning a lopsided but unanimous decision. “I’m done,” he announced at his gala retirement party in Vegas. “There’s nothing else to do.”

But last summer, at 42, Hopkins was back in the fray, defeating Ronald “Winky” Wright on points to raise his record to 48-4-1 and claim The Ring magazine’s light-heavyweight title. “I never lost my motivation or my competitive desire,” explains the self-styled “Executioner.”

With his bullet-hard eyes and fisticuffs-honed abs, Hopkins still looks as if he has been hammered on the anvil of the gods to be an emblem of war. “I wanted not to have any regrets of me not finishing up the way I wanted to finish up,” he says, “especially knowing I had something left.”

As a pensioner, his purses total $11 million. Indeed, the $8 million that he will earn on Saturday night is the second-largest payday of his career.

In Calzaghe, Hopkins will face a gritty Welsh southpaw who is undefeated in 44 fights. Though Hopkins will enter the ring as a 3-to-1 underdog, he’ll no doubt take solace in the fact that he has defeated 11 lefthanders during his pro career, with no losses.

“Out of all the things I have accomplished in my life and career, this bout will be super-duper testimony to the legacy I will leave behind,” the boxer says. “The only fight to me that really makes sense right now is no fight. I don’t need to fight anyone, that’s the simple truth.”

Win, lose, or draw, Hopkins says that this will be his finale: “Whether I want to retire or not, I think I’m forced to retire, because I ran out of opponents. I’m not going in there dancing with no 24- or 25-year-olds. I don’t pick on nobody unless they’re 35 and up. There’s no one in the game at a high level able to satisfy my craving. I ran out of really quality names to fight.”

Hopkins is an animated talker whose conversation moves by digression. Actually, he doesn’t talk—he comes at you. And he comes at you unceasingly with rat-a-tat words, like peas from a peashooter, the same way he goes after opponents in the ring.

His conversation veers happily from topic to topic like a bumper car in an amusement park. A 10-minute interview will stretch into a 90-minute discourse on the state of boxing, the nation, ancient Greece, mayoral politics in his native Philadelphia, and the possibility that Barack Obama will be assassinated if he beats Hillary Clinton.

“I think Obama would be killed,” Hopkins says flatly. “America is not ready for an African American in the White House.”

Even in semi-retirement, Hopkins remains as radically intransigent as ever. To boost ticket sales, he often resorts to deliberately inflammatory gestures. He twice threw down a Puerto Rican flag in the run-up to his 2001 showdown with native son Felix “Tito” Trinidad—once in San Juan, where it nearly caused a riot.

This time around, Hopkins tried to stir things up by proclaiming that he would “never lose to a white boy.” So far, the ploy hasn’t worked: Ticket sales are sluggish. Fortunately, the $16 million purse has already been covered by the site fee (the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino put up $9.5 million) and the domestic broadcasting rights (HBO is shelling out $6.5 million).

Hopkins’ post-retirement financial dealings have been more to his liking than many of his pre-retirement ones. Back when he KO’d Trinidad, his take was $2.8 million, and the possibilities seemed endless. To get that shot at Tito, however, Hopkins was required to sign an exclusive three-year deal with boxing promoter Don King.

Hopkins says that pride, principle, and King were the reasons he turned down more than $15 million in purses over the length of the contract. A potential fight with Roy Jones Jr., who defeated Hopkins on points in a 1993 bout, blew up when Hopkins balked at the $6 million he was offered (he wanted $8 million); King reportedly would have pocketed $4 million for arranging the fight.

Hopkins then refused a $5.5 million, three-fight deal with Showtime because he thought it wasn’t enough money (plus he would have had to travel to Wales for one bout to face Calzaghe). The boxer also rejected a $3.3 million offer to face I.B.F. cruiserweight champ James Toney (King had previously promised him $4.3 million, but couldn’t deliver).

Hopkins did have a rematch lined up with Trinidad, but it fell through when Trinidad retired—though, like Hopkins, Tito has since returned to the sport. Even so, Hopkins was put off by what would have been his take, $5 million. “Insulting!” he says. “Felix got $8 million for losing our first match.”

This go-round, Hopkins seems almost at peace. Last year, he found great satisfaction in getting called out by Calzaghe, the undisputed super-middleweight champ.

“I’m in my rocking chair at home, minding my business, playing with my eight-year-old daughter, ready to turn 43, when I hear him call my name out,” Hopkins recalls. “I’m excited and elated that a guy who is supposedly at the top of his game wants to call out an old man. So, after I picked up my cane and put my teeth in, I got up and stood in the middle of the room and thought, Well, maybe I still got it a little bit.”

Though he treasures his years in the ring, he is looking forward to the life after. He’s a real estate investor who rehabilitates distressed properties in North Philadelphia, a minority shareholder in Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, and would love to write a monthly column for The Ring, which Golden Boy recently purchased. And he’s toying with the idea of entering politics.

“Philly’s got a new mayor,” he says. “Things are turning around in the city and I want to be a part of that. Maybe there’s a political future for Bernard Hopkins. Or maybe there’s a future for him at home, hanging out with his wife and daughter.”

But then Hopkins doesn’t seem like the retiring kind.