By Dan Ambrose: WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins is saying that a rematch against Chad Dawson is the only fight for him right now. Speaking on his twitter page, the soon to be 47-year-old Hopkins said “Me and Chad will fight very soon!! That’s the only fight for me!”

It sounds good that Hopkins is talking about a Dawson rematch, but it’s kind of hard to believe when you take in some of the other comments he’s been making about the fight possibly not making good business sense for either of them. Hopkins wants to fight unification bouts against WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly and WBA champ Beibut Shumenov in 2012, and a rematch against the 29-year-old Dawson could spoil things for Hopkins if he loses. To be sure, Hopkins didn’t look good against Dawson in the two rounds of action last October.

Although the fight ended early after Hopkins fell down and injured shoulder in the 2nd, the fact remains that he didn’t look good. Dawson looked to be the stronger, faster and things were shaping up to a very grueling fight for Hopkins. This wasn’t going to be the nice slow fight he had against Jean Pascal months earlier. Dawson was going to make Hopkins work hard and take a lot of shots. I don’t think things were going to go well for Hopkins in this fight.

It would be surprising if Hopkins takes the Dawson fight because the Cleverly bout is a potential big payday for Hopkins if he’s willing to fly to Wales to make it. I don’t know how much money the Shumenov fight will make for Hopkins. He likely wants that fight in order to just capture Shumenov’s title because then Hopkins could have three of the four light heavyweight titles in his possession and he could retire at that point with a lot of fan respect.

Hopkins isn’t interested in facing IBF champion Tavoris Cloud, so that’s the one belt in theory that Hopkins won’t bother trying to capture before he retires. None of this will really matter if Hopkins is forced to fight Dawson because it could all end right there for B-Hop. I’m not sure if Cleverly’s promoter will be as eager to have Cleverly fight Hopkins with him coming off of a loss to Dawson. That might not excite British fans the same way as a fight between Cleverly and Hopkins now with Hopkins still in possession of the WBC belt.