By Dan Ambrose: As ESPN2 analyst Teddy Atlas pointed out, Jean Pascal fought in only brief spurts against 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins, letting the older fighter control the pace and rest when he wanted to. Atlas sees this as one of the main reasons why Hopkins was able to beat Pascal in their rematch on May 21st. However, Hopkins is now set to fight Chad Dawson, a tall 6’3″ southpaw with fast hands and excellent technical skills and an and ability to get out of the way of Hopkins’ slower shots.

Dawson beat Adrian Diaconu by a 12 round decision last weekend and that win paved the way for the Hopkins fight. Dawson doesn’t have a work rate to make Hopkins fight really hard but he’s got the style and the ability to force Hopkins to fight much harder than he did in the Pascal fight. Hopkins won’t find it easy to charge forward and land without missing or getting hit on the way in with Dawson’s perfectly timed uppercuts.

This is a bad fight for Hopkins because he looked slow on his feet against an unwilling Pascal last Saturday night, and a slow fighter like Hopkins will have problems against Dawson. The kinds of fighters that Dawson has problems against or ones like Pascal with fast hands. Dawson eats up slower guys like Hopkins, because he can see their punches coming and he can move out of the way and make them miss. Hopkins won’t be able to use his diving in tactic against Dawson. That won’t work. Hopkins will have to come up with a better strategy if he wants to win, and I don’t think he’s got the youth to pull off a win unless it’s a controversial one.