By Chris Williams: I hope Bernard Hopkins doesn’t mind waiting around for a long time for a fight with World Boxing Association heavyweight champion David Haye, because by the time that the British fighter is available to fight him, Hopkins may be 46-years-old. Although this might make a mildly intriguing fight for some boxing fans, the problem is that Haye has at least two title defenses he has to get out of the way before he’s available to fight Hopkins.

Haye has a title defense against mandatory challenger John Ruiz early next year in 2010. After that, depending on whether Haye wins or not, he would then be looking at fighting a rematch with Russian heavyweight Nikolay Valuev later in 2010. Those two fights would pretty much take care of all of 2010 for Haye.

If he can beat both Ruiz and Valuev, then we would be looking at a potential Hopkins-Haye bout in early 2011. Hopkins’ birthday is on January 15th, which means that at the minimum Hopkins would be 46-years-old by the time that he lands a fight with Haye. Age may be just a number, but I don’t know that a lot of boxing fans will be able to get up for a bout between a 46-year-old undersized Hopkins versus Haye, who also isn’t exactly big either for a heavyweight. If Hopkins’ bout against last Wednesday night’s opponent Enrique Ornelas is any gauge, it’s doubtful that Hopkins would be a big enough name to make the Haye-Hopkins fight a huge seller in the U.S.

If the fight had occurred four or five years ago, there might be some interest for this fight, but I can’t see too much excitement coming for it now. Hopkins didn’t look good against Ornelas. He looked slow, older, heavier and missed with many of shots even with Ornelas directly in front of him.

Most of the fight seemed to entail a bunch of clinching and smothering from Hopkins. His work rate was slow and he looked nowhere near as sharp as he was 14 months earlier last year in a 12 round decision over Kelly Pavlik. I don’t know that I’d like to see a 46-year-old Hopkins bloat up to heavyweight and fight Haye, a much faster and bigger fighter. I realize that both Haye and Hopkins fight for Golden Boy Promotions, which would make the fight doable, but that doesn’t mean that they should.

George Foreman was still a force to be reckoned with at 46, but he fought at heavyweight his entire career and had enormous strength and good size. Hopkins has never been a huge puncher and has fought most of his boxing career at middleweight. If he was to move up in weight to the heavyweight division and fight at 46, I see the bout as nothing more than an expensive exhibition bout. If the fight were held on free television like ESPN, sure I’d watch it.

But you know and I know that they would make a Hopkins-Haye bout pay-per-view and would likely charge 49.95 for boxing fans to see it. That’s not worth it. I don’t want to pay huge money to see some small old guy like Hopkins get wiped out by a quicker, more powerful and bigger heavyweight like Haye. It wouldn’t be interesting for me, other than seeing it like some kind of Roman game where they throw people to the lions. Hopkins would likely get torn apart by Haye, and I wouldn’t want to see it. I’d feel sorry for Hopkins, even if he was getting paid well.

I hope Hopkins stays busy and doesn’t sit idle waiting for the Haye fight to happen. At 44, soon to be 45 next month, Hopkins can’t afford to sit around and wait another 14 or more months for the Haye fight. Hopkins should stay busy and fight Danny Green and Chad Dawson while he waits for Haye.