Bernard Hopkins is 43 years old but the American light-heavyweight insists that age will not be a factor when he faces super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe in Las Vegas on Saturday.

"Times have changed where 43 today is not the same as 43 in the 70s and 60s," Hopkins told a news conference on Wednesday.

"I am true to the game," he added. "I love the game of boxing. I take this very seriously. I don't have days off to the point where I let myself go. I don't drink beer. I don't drink alcohol. I don't do anything to my temple, which is my body.

"That's why I'm here. I could say I'm just that damn good and be done with it. But I'm not a fool. It took a process of discipline that I got from that dark place 20-something years ago."

The dark place in question was a life of crime on the streets of Philadelphia which resulted in his imprisonment at the age of 17. Hopkins witnessed rapes in jail and the murder of an inmate following an argument over a pack of cigarettes.

It was also in prison that he discovered boxing and shortly after his release in 1987 he turned professional.

He won the IBF world middleweight title in April 1995 with victory over Segundo Mercado of Ecuador and became undisputed champion when he knocked out Felix Trinidad at Madison Square Garden in New York in September 2001.

Hopkins made 20 successful middleweight defenses before losing two close decisions to Jermain Taylor in 2005. The following year, he moved up to light-heavyweight and knocked down champion Antonio Tarver on the way to a unanimous decision.

Hopkins originally announced his retirement after the Tarver win, saying he planned to honor a promise to his late mother not to fight past the age of 40. Twelve months later, however, he was back in the ring, posting a decision victory over former middleweight champion Winky Wright.

Hopkins once again hinted at the possibility of retirement after fighting Briton Calzaghe.

"This is my third assassination of a southpaw in the last year and a half," he said, referring to the left-handed stances of Tarver, Wright and Calzaghe. "This is number three. And (after) three, I might be out, but on my terms.

"I'm going to show the world how much you're going to miss this particular athlete.

"Come Sunday morning, after the fight, it's going to be a tough decision where you put me in your history books."

(Agencies April 18, 2008)