By Eric Thomas: Rather than fight an immediate rematch with Chad Dawson and show that the fight wasn’t a fluke thing, WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (26-1, 16 KO’s) will elect to get one fight in between the rematch by taking on 45-year-old Bernard Hopkins (51-5, 32 KO’s) in December, according to the latest boxing news.

This is a fight is almost guaranteed to be a letdown, because Hopkins has looked poor in his last two fights and Pascal didn’t exactly look great either against Dawson. The fight still hasn’t been confirmed but the word is that both Pascal and Hopkins’ promoters are looking to put it together for the end of the year.

I think this is a bad fight because Hopkins doesn’t have the youth and the hand speed to compete with the much faster and younger 27-year-old Pascal. What we’re likely to see is a variation of Hopkins fight with Calzaghe in which Hopkins does a lot of punching and holding. If he uses his trusty punch and grab technique, I have no doubts that Hopkins will shut down Pascal’s offense.

However, he won’t shut it down enough to the point where he’ll win the fight, but he will dramatically limit the punches that Pascal will throw in the fight. But what Hopkins will do besides that is make the fight almost unwatchable if he does end up clinching all night. HBO will likely show this fight, and I’m not sure if that will be a wise move.

In looking at Hopkins’s last two fights against Enrique Ornelas and Roy Jones Jr., both of the fights were incredibly boring to watch. Hopkins had the right opponents for these fights to be exciting, and yet they were painful to watch because of the non-action in each of them.

I don’t see anything changing with Hopkins fighting Pascal. If anything, I can see these fights even being more boring than those fights, because Hopkins may decide to clinch even more to try and compensate for his lack of hand speed. With HBO turning down the Klitschko brothers’ fights because they were deemed not interesting, I don’t see how they could put Hopkins vs. Pascal.

I think this fight would be even more boring than a typical Klitschko fight, because it won’t a produce a knockout and there won’t be a lot of punches thrown. Hopkins is a technician and he’ll be working to try and prevent Pascal from getting his shots off.