By Dan Ambrose: If you look at WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins’ fights since 2008, you’ll notice that he likes to slow the fights down to a crawl where both he and his opponents are throwing in the low digits. This is a tactic that enables the 46-year-old Hopkins to fight without pushing the limits of his aging body.

We’ve seen this kind of tactic work for heavyweights like John Ruiz, who remade his career with his punch and grab technique. Hopkins is able to control his fights by punching in spots and then slowing the fight down with the inside grappling. On October 15th, Hopkins faces what many boxing fans see as the best fighter in the division in the young Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.

One of Dawson’s trainers Winky Wright knows first hand how Hopkins can slow a fight down and beat you, as Wright was beaten by Hopkins by a 12 round decision in 2007. Wright couldn’t keep Hopkins off of him and ended up losing control of the fight.

Wright said this to the dailynews.com: “Don’t let Bernard try to slow the tempo down to his speed, and then he’ll try to shoot a lot of punches, then slow you back down…He’s definitely good at that.”

Very true. Fighters tend to mimic the tempo of their opponents at times instead of being mentally aware enough that they need to be the one setting the tempo of the fights. Pressure fighters are less inclined to slowing their games down, because their style only has one gear and that’s all action. But for boxer/punchers like Dawson, he’s definitely susceptible to slowing things down when his opponents are fighting in spurts. This is why Dawson lost to Jean Pascal last year.

Pascal only fought in spots, and mostly threw pot shots from time to time, conserving energy and not being pushed by Dawson. This enabled Pascal, who is a four round fighter at best, to fight for the entire 12 rounds without gassing out. Dawson let him do this by fighting down to his slow pace. If Hopkins can get away with this against Dawson, he’ll likely win enough rounds to hold onto his World Boxing Council belt next Saturday night.