By Dan Ambrose: It’s good that WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) has decided to take on Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) finally after all these years. Dawson has been after Hopkins for what seems like forever without luck. But Dawson finally gets his chance on October 15th, and it’s only fitting that he’s the one that faces the 46-year-old Hopkins to finally dethrone him and take his WBC title.

Dawson gets to be the one that finishes off Hopkins and sends him into retirement. This is what Dawson wants and it’s great that he gets to take the reins from Hopkins and officially take control of the light heavyweight division.

Dawson has everything in his favor in this fight except for experience. That obviously goes to Hopkins, but even in that department both fighters are fairly close. To be sure, Hopkins has fought nearly twice as many fights compared to the 29-year-old Dawson, but many of those bouts have come against lesser opposition. There is definitely a lot of padding on Hopkins resume. His best fights have come against Joe Calzaghe, Roy Jones Jr. [in 1994], Jermain Taylor, Winky Wright, Antonio Tarver, Kelly Pavlik, Jean Pascal, Felix Trinidad, and Oscar De La Hoya.

Hopkins lost to Taylor and Calzaghe. And the wins over Wright, Tarver, Pascal, Trinidad and De La Hoya aren’t as impressive as you would think because those guys were fighting out of their weight class against the bigger Hopkins. Dawson has always fought at light heavyweight, so he doesn’t have the same disadvantages compared to Hopkins’ big wins.