By Dan Ambrose: Former two times light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) vows not to make the same mistake as former WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal made in his recent loss to 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) by not throwing enough punches. Dawson plans on using his jab, hand speed and youth to take the fight to Hopkins and out-work him in their upcoming October 15th fight at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.

Hopkins is riding high right now after beating Pascal by a 12 round unanimous decision last May to capture his World Boxing Council light heavyweight title. However, Dawson plans on taking that confidence away from Hopkins by putting pressure on him and making him work a lot harder than he had to in his win over Pascal.

Dawson was beaten by Pascal last year in a 11th round technical decision loss. Dawson has problems with Pascal’s hand speed and seemed wary of mixing it up with him because of his power. That was a fight where Dawson threw few punches until finally opening up with a flurry of shots in the 11th and seemingly hurting Pascal before the fight was stopped because of a cut that Dawson sustained from a clash of heads.

Dawson is now trained by Emanuel Steward, who has changed Dawson’s style of fighting by having him throw more punches and using his jab much more. This could be a very bad match-up for Hopkins because he’s been finding success recently against undisciplined fighters that haven’t been using their jabs much or speed. Hopkins did well against Pascal in their two fights because was looking for one big shot and failed to throw enough punches to win.

Pascal ended up giving Hopkins plenty of rest breaks so that he didn’t have to really use his 46-year-old legs much. Before that, Hopkins beat an old Roy Jones Jr, who threw view punches in the fight and looked like a statue. You have to go back to Hopkins fight against Kelly Pavlik in 2008 where Hopkins faced a young guy that could still fight a little bit. But Pavlik was exposed badly in that fight and was no match for Hopkins. Pavlik didn’t have the hand speed to deal with the older Hopkins and fought a really poor fight.

In an interview at fighthype.com, Dawson says he’s going to use his jab, speed and youth to beat Hopkins. Dawson points out that Pascal made the mistake of not throwing enough punches to beat Hopkins and not trying to out-work him the way that he should have. This suggests that Dawson is going to take the fight to Hopkins and try to wear him down, but not on the inside the way that Hopkins would obviously prefer.