By Dan Ambrose: 45-year-old Bernard Hopkins (51-5-1, 32 KO’s) sees his December 18th fight against WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (26-1, 16 KO’s) as a way for him to capture another title, improve his legacy and turn back the time on his career. The two will be battling at the Pepsi Coliseum, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Hopkins wants to be one of the oldest fighter that have won a major title, but for him to accomplish that task he’s going to have to perform a lot better than he’s done in his last two fights against Enrique Ornelas and Roy Jones Jr.

In those bouts, Hopkins has showed the inability to fight hard for three minutes of every round of the fight. Indeed, Hopkins seems only able to fight hard for 45 second to a minute. Most of the time he seems to be wrestling, holding, falling down, making faces when punches hit him in the midsection or on the side of the head. It just seems as if Hopkins is now limited to just a small amount of hard fighting in each round, and while I don’t mind seeing a little bit of wrestling and mugging on the inside, it gets old quickly when the same thing goes on round after round.

I honestly don’t see how Hopkins can win this fight based on how little energy he fights with nowadays. Maybe the judges will give him some mercy rounds and score some of the fight for him based on old time’s sake or because of his bigger name, but I don’t see him being able to be a young, fast fighter like Pascal. That wrestling and flopping around style probably won’t impress the judges in Canada and Hopkins isn’t much of a knockout puncher at 45. I expect Hopkins to lose pretty much every round of the fight against Pascal. Unless Hopkins somehow finds the fountain of youth and can fight hard for 12 rounds, I see him losing badly.