By Dan Ambrose: WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) is saying that he’ll give Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) a rematch after the Hopkins was ordered by the World Boxing Council to fight Dawson again after the California State Athletic Commission overturned Dawson’s 2nd round TKO win upon appeal by Hopkins’ promoters from Golden Boy successfully appealed the TKO loss.

But before the WBC ordered Hopkins to give Dawson a rematch, Hopkins was looking at other fights instead of wanting to fight a rematch with Dawson and try and prove that he’s the better fighter.

Dawson wants the rematch and is now waiting to see if Hopkins will take the fight or vacate his belt. Hopkins said on his twitter recently that he will face Dawson but that remains to be seen whether he’ll want to take that risk and possibly get badly schooled by the bigger, faster and stronger fighter.

One thing is for sure is that the rematch shouldn’t be a pay per view bout because their previous fight was rumored to have brought anemic PPV numbers. Although both Dawson and Hopkins are excellent fighters in their own right, but neither of them have huge fan bases like Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto.

Those are the big three in the PPV boxing business and Hopkins and Dawson are obviously way down below those guys in terms of fans.
Hopkins turns 47 next month on January 15th, and while he put in extraordinary performances in his two bouts against Jean Pascal, Hopkins looked as if he had aged some when he faced Dawson last October. It wasn’t just that Dawson was so good, it was that Hopkins looked as if he had something between his last fight against Pascal and his bout with Dawson.

It’s weird but it just looked like Hopkins had suddenly gone into age acceleration. It does like that with people sometime. Some people age slowly and you wonder when are they are they going to start to show signs of aging and then next time you see them, wham, they’ve suddenly gotten old in front of your eyes.

This is what I saw with Hopkins. He had gotten old, and he was going to take a bad beating against Dawson if he hadn’t fell down in the 2nd round and injured his shoulder. Antonio Tarver really questions whether Hopkins really wanted to fight, because he didn’t make the effort to continue. Who knows?

But Hopkins is going to have to stay on his feet and not flop with every little bump that happens in the Dawson rematch. For Hopkins to win he’s going to have to find some speed and power. I don’t see how he can come up with anything that he didn’t have last time. If anything, Hopkins will be even worse than he was last time because he’s coming off of a shoulder problem and he’s a little older.

I see Dawson giving Hopkins a bad beating to the point where Hopkins will be considering retirement afterwards. I don’t that he will retire but I think it will be a one-sided enough beat down to where Hopkins should retire. From there on, I think it’s all downhill for Hopkins unless he goes after old lions like Roy Jones Jr. and Antonio Tarver.