By Dan Ambrose: In what most boxing fans will see as great news, Dan Rafael is reporting that the December 18th bout between WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (26-1, 16 KO’s) and 45-year-old Bernard Hopkins (51-5-1, 32 KO’s) will be a non-pay per view bout shown on regular Showtime instead of on PPV.

This excellent news, because it was hard to imagine having to pay to watch these two fighters go at it. For one, Pascal isn’t well known and doesn’t have a large following in the United States. And for two, Hopkins hasn’t put on a good performance for at least two years since beating Kelly Pavlik in October 2008.

Hopkins’ fights against Enrique Ornelas and Roy Jones Jr. have been painfully boring and lackluster bouts without much action. The Pascal-Hopkins bout will be taking place at the Pepsi Coliseum, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.

Hopkins is talking about wanting to make history as one of the oldest fighters to be winning a title. However, the chances of Hopkins doing that are pretty slim given how poor, stamina plagued and just plain average he’s looked in his last two fights.

Hopkins’ believers are focused on what he’s done in the past when they estimate his chances in the Pascal fight. However, they fail to realize that the Hopkins that beat fighters like Antonio Tarver, Winky Wright, Felix Trinidad, and Pavlik no longer exists.

That’s a Hopkins from many yesterday’s ago, and the present Hopkins is a lot slower, and more prone to wrestling, clinching and flopping around on the canvas to buy time to rest or get points taken away from his opponents.

As such, Pascal should easily beat Hopkins unless Pascal fights an absolutely dumb fight by trying to wrestle and clinch with Hopkins. That’s really going to be Hopkins’ game plan in this fight, and if Pascal tries to wrestle with him, which I have no idea he would be silly enough to even try this, then I can see Hopkins winning.

But Pascal isn’t about to fight a primitive wrestling war with Hopkins. Pascal will use his speed, power, movement and youth to give Hopkins a sound whipping. That won’t stop Hopkins from trying to slow the fight down to an ugly crawl by trying to grab, clinch and wrestle as much as possible, but it won’t be enough to impress any of the judges and he’ll end up losing.