By Dan Ambrose: The way that 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins was talking in his final press conference it was like he was preparing himself for defeat. Hopkins didn’t sound confident at all, and instead sounded almost as if he were giving a retirement speech.

Hopkins said “I’m the last of a dying breed. When you guys want to write something, you write that…That’s what I am. That’s the headlines.”

Amusing. Hopkins appears to be giving tips for what the headline should be after he loses the fight to Dawson. I don’t know that there will be too many, if any, headlines saying that given that Hopkins probably won’t retire even if he does lose badly to Dawson. Hopkins is one of those fighters that will likely stick around for as long as he can. He matches up well against certain fighters, such as Jean Pascal and Kelly Pavlik. He DOESN’T match up well with Dawson.

That’s the wrong style and the wrong fighter for Hopkins, and it would have been a terrible match-up for Hopkins no matter what point in his career. He would have never had the size to beat the natural 175 pound Dawson earlier in Hopkins’ career when he was dominating the 160 pound division. And the way that Hopkins likes to win his fights, by using his strength to pin his opponents to the ropes so that he can work them over on the inside, wouldn’t have worked against the stronger more elusive Dawson. He simply wouldn’t have allowed Hopkins to fight his game.

On Saturday night, Hopkins faces Chad Dawson at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It doesn’t look for Hopkins, because he’s facing an all around better fighter than him, who is immune to the usual mind games that Hopkins likes to use to psych out his opponents.

Under the best case scenario, I can seen Hopkins moving all night long and losing a wide 12 round decision. But as far as him beating Dawson goes, that’s not going to happen. Hopkins will fight like he did last time by circling the ring, holding and looking to lean on Dawson to try and weaken him. He’ll try different tricks and hope he can come up with something. But believe me, whatever Hopkins does, Dawson will answer back with three to four punches combinations and leave Hopkins looking old and slow. There are just too many dimensions that Dawson has in his game, whereas Hopkins has to fight like he always does by trying to get off first and then collapse into his opponent to try and wrestle on the inside or slow down the action.