AMERICA AT LARGE: FROM THE moment he emerged from his dressingroom last Saturday night it was apparent Bernard Hopkins might have turned back the clock, all right - to a time when he was, say, 11 years old and dressed to go trick-or-treating.

As he made his sombre entrance into the arena it was hard to know whether Hopkins was trying out his Halloween costume or auditioning for a role in the final scene of the revival of A Man for All Seasonscurrently playing on Broadway.

The 43-year-old Hopkins styles himself "The Executioner", and his ring-walk get-up has grown increasingly elaborate over the years. If the masked, shrouded figure who showed up for the Kelly Pavlik fight seemed vaguely familiar, it might be because B-Hop's cousin Willie Gibbs, aka "The Gladiator", apparently gets the hand-me-downs, one of which he wore into the ring against Andy Lee before their fight in Limerick last July.

More than three years had elapsed since Hopkins's 20-defence middleweight reign had ended with a loss to Jermain Taylor, two years since he had announced "I'm done" and been feted with a retirement party after outpointing Winky Wright.

That didn't last long: six months ago Hopkins appeared to have been overtaken by Father Time; his April loss to Joe Calzaghe was his third defeat in his last five fights, yet here he was back again, fighting a man 17 years his junior.

If you were searching for explanations, Hopkins had three million good ones, but even that guaranteed purse seemed small reward for the risk he appeared to be taking - not only to his boxing legacy but, given his advanced age, to his physical wellbeing.

In the days before Saturday's Atlantic City encounter, Hopkins gave Pavlik all due credit, but predicted the undefeated middleweight champion would find himself doing some serious soul-searching on the fly "when he finds out he's been lied to".

"They've been assuring him he'll be fighting an old man," said B-Hop.

He dispelled that illusion almost from the opening bell, and it rapidly became apparent Hopkins's shrewdest victory at the negotiating table had come not in achieving financial parity in the purse structure, but in persuading Pavlik's handlers to agree to a non-title bout with a 170-lb catchweight limit.

The extra 10lb effectively neutralised any advantage in speed by the younger man, and, from the moment he stripped off his executioner's regalia, Hopkins seemed to have brushed away the cobwebs of age as well. If anything, he looked as if he were 17 years younger, not older, than his opponent.

Just before the main event started, Pavlik's manager Cameron Dunkin had insinuated himself into a ringside press position. Six rounds into the 12-round bout he turned to me and said: "Kelly's won one round at most. He's got absolutely nothing.

"He's a middleweight," sighed Dunkin, who might have added, though he did not, "This is like watching a man against a boy."

By then the thoroughly bewildered Pavlik had developed a mouse beneath his right eye, and his left cheek evinced an increasingly purplish cast. Unable to respond to the anguished shrieks of his army of Ohio supporters or to the advice of his frustrated trainer Jack Loew, he battled inexorably on, though the best I could tell he never put two punches together all night.

Less than two days before the bout, the embattled New Jersey commission (chairman Larry Hazzard was discharged almost a year ago, and his successor, Aaron Davis, won't take office until next week) had agreed to replace referee Earl Morton, who, Pavlik's camp charged, enjoyed a personal relationship with Hopkins.

The accuracy of that supposition remains unlearned, but we can tell you this much: Morton was a Hazzard protege whose rise to prominence occurred on the deposed commissioner's watch. And just before he donned his executioner's mask in the dressingroom, Hopkins was visited there by Larry Hazzard, who wrapped him in what appeared to be a fond embrace. As it turned out, of course, Kelly's father, Mike Pavlik, could have refereed the bout and it wouldn't have much altered the outcome.

Morton's replacement Benjy Esteves did penalise Pavlik a point (for hitting Hopkins behind the head in an eighth-round clinch), but a round later he took one from B-Hop as well, this time for excessive holding.

Hopkins had gone in a more than 3 to 1 underdog. The most astonishing thing wasn't that he won, but the ease with which he did so. (Given the point deductions, the official 119-106, 118-108, 117-109 scorecards translate to Pavlik having been awarded zero, one, and two rounds by the three judges.) At the final bell, and before the perfunctory rendition of the verdict, Hopkins made his way to the press-row side of the ring.

Leaning over the ropes, he appeared to be glowering defiantly at each and every one of us who had dismissed his chances.

That's when I noticed the tears welling up in his eyes. It had been such a bravura performance he had surprised even himself.

"My best performance ever," Hopkins said later. "Better than Tarver, better than Trinidad, better than De La Hoya."

Hopkins now has a strong rooting interest in the outcome of the November 8th fight between Calzaghe and Roy Jones jr. The boxing world might not welcome a second Calzaghe-Hopkins rematch, but B-Hop has been chasing Jones (who whipped him when they met as middleweights back in 1993) for 15 years.

"I'd fight Roy in a heartbeat," said Hopkins. "I'd even go to England to fight Calzaghe if he wins, but wouldn't a fight against Roy be huge?"

Since Pavlik's middleweight titles weren't on the line, he retains those, even while being stripped of his pride.

In the final scene of Robert Bolt's aforementioned play, Sir Thomas More begs the executioner's assistance as he ascends to the chopping block before assuring him, "I'll shift for myself coming down."

Hopkins, having thoroughly outboxed his foe, made his way to Pavlik's corner and whispered into the younger man's ear, "Don't let this fight destroy you. You're a great middleweight champion. You have a great heart, so keep your head up."

Stripped of his silly costume and the accoutrements of the resentful, me-against-the-world defiance with which he has motivated himself since he walked out the prison gates more than two decades ago, it occurred to us at that moment that Bernard Hopkins may indeed have become a man for all seasons. And you'd have to say that his autumn guise is particularly appealing.