By Simon Lewis, Las Vegas

Fight week in Las Vegas is a glitzy affair when all the big names in boxing roll into town and the days leading up to Hatton-Pacquiao have been no exception.

At the final pre-fight press conference today were not only the fighters and their camps but Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley and Oscar De La Hoya, all there in their roles as co-promoters with the latter’s Golden Boy Promotions company.

Hopkins may be a dour, albeit incredibly effective boxer but he is a sports writer’s dream out of the ring and he held court in front of the stage during the post-conference interview scrum for at least an hour as an ever changing huddle of reporters formed around him.

He can be an unnerving presence when right in front of your nose and that’s when just armed with a voice recorder and you can readily imagine how Kelly Pavlik felt when the 43-year-old Hopkins dismantled him last year.

The ‘Executioner’ stares his interviewers straight in the eye and pours forth with such passion and conviction it can be downright menacing, especially when he turns the question back on the assembled reporters, prodding them in the chest to provoke an answer and spitting out profanities along the way.

“Calm down Bernard, you’re shouting,” sounds the admonishing Kelly Swanson, PR handler for Golden Boy, but Hopkins can’t hear her, he’s in full flow, berating journalists who wrote him off as a has-been following his defeat to Joe Calzaghe and ahead of his date with Pavlik.

When one journo departs the group and whispers something in the ear of a bystander, Hopkins spots it immediately and pounces.

“See that!” he cries. “He’s one of them and he knows I was talking about him but he’s not man enough to stand here and take it!

“See him skulking off!”

Hopkins approaches the bystander and demands to be told what was whispered.

“Hear that?” he bellows, “He goes up to my man and whispers ‘I’ve heard enough of this! Ha!

“You see,” he continues, returning to his ‘quieter’ shout, “I don’t miss a thing, eyes in the back of my head.I see everything, I see into your soul!”

And who are we to argue?