By Dan Ambrose: 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins may get his WBC title back after the World Boxing Council finishes their review of Hopkins’ 2nd round TKO loss to Chad Dawson last Saturday night. The outcome of that fight will probably be overturned and changed to a no contest; in which case Hopkins will keep his WBC title.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that Hopkins was getting handled by Dawson in that fight and things didn’t look good for the 46-year-old Hopkins. I know there was still 10 rounds to go, but Hopkins didn’t have the same kind of energy, speed or size that Dawson had and I think it would be a stretch to see Hopkins being able to win this fight.

Hopkins may get his title back, but the fight showed pretty clearly that old Bernard isn’t in the same league as Dawson and would get beaten in a rematch. Hopkins’ promoter Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions has already said that they won’t be looking to fight Dawson again, which is kind of telling. Normally, a fighter that struggled and was stopped in the 2nd round would want to clear up the controversy by looking to get a rematch with the foe that beat them. But this kind of tells you all you need to know.

I don’t think Hopkins can still be considered the best fighter in the light heavyweight division after the way that Dawson handled him. The skill levels appear to be too far apart right now at this stage in Hopkins’ career and I think Dawson may be only the start of Hopkins’ problems should he decide to continue with his career.

Other fighters in the division such as Tavoris Cloud and Beibut Shumenov would likely wear Hopkins down and give him losses unless there were to be a similar stoppages with Hopkins hitting the deck from a bump, elbow or rabbit punch and not able to continue fighting.