By Jason Kim: Newly crowned WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) says he doesn’t care who he faces next – Lucian Bute or Chad Dawson. This comes after beating Jean Pascal (26-2-1, 16 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision last Saturday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Other than a brief struggle in the first four rounds, Hopkins took over the fight from then on and dominated Pascal for the remainder of the bout.

So dominant was Hopkins’ performance that he even took the opportunity to do some push-ups before the start of the 7th round. That had to be more than a little intimidating to Pascal, who by that time looked completely befuddled and was no longer throwing many punches. In winning, Hopkins breaks George Foreman’s record as the oldest fighter to ever win a world title.

Hopkins, 46, broke Foreman’s record from 1994, when Foreman was a ripe 45 when he knocked out Michael Moorer in the 10th round. With the win, Hopkins says he plans on fighting until he’s 50. Of course, Hopkins may increase that number if he’s still fighting well at that point. Right now, there’s really only one interesting opponent for Hopkins at light heavyweight and that’s Dawson (30-1, 17 Ko’s).

If Hopkins can get past Dawson, provided that Hopkins doesn’t bypass the Dawson fight, then Hopkins will be looking to get a fight against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute after that. Hopkins promoters would prefer that Hopkins get the Bute fight now rather than the Dawson fight. However, it was previously agreed that the Hopkins-Pascal winner would fight Dawson next. It would be asking a lot of Dawson for him to step aside to let the Hopkins vs. Bute fight go ahead first. But perhaps they can give Dawson a step aside fee so that this fight can go ahead.