By Eric Thomas: 46-year-old WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) received some good news today by the California State Athletic Commission, who met today to rule on Hopkin’s controversial 2nd round technical decision loss to Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) from October 15th in which Hopkins was shoved off the back of Dawson and thrown/pushed to the canvas.

Hopkins injured his left shoulder upon landing on the canvas. The referee failed then ruled it a TKO win for Dawson instead of a no contest. Earlier the World Boxing Council overturned the 2nd round TKO loss and ruled it also as a no contest. Hopkins was hoping to have Dawson disqualified, as he felt that Dawson intentionally threw him down and was trying to hurt him.

However, Hopkins is also happy with the no contest, as it erases the loss from his record.

Hopkins said today “Justice was served.”
The victory isn’t much of one, because the fight with Dawson is like a fight that didn’t happen and Hopkins didn’t look good in the brief two rounds of action. A lot of boxing fans felt that Hopkins used the contact as an excuse to fall down and pretend he was hurt in order to escape a potential embarrassing loss to Dawson.

Hopkins says he’s got x-rays and other medical tests to show that he was injured, but there are still boxing fans out there who don’t believe him. The best thing Hopkins can do to quiet his critics is for him to attempt to fight a rematch with Dawson to proof that he is the better fighter.

However, Hopkins is targeting IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute rather than Dawson, so there likely won’t be any closure on that end. A lot of fans felt that Hopkins had been dodging Dawson for years, and now will continue to dodge him until retirement.

I think Hopkins may be doing the wrong thing by walking away from the Dawson fight without showing he’s the better guy. There are only a few really good fighters in the light heavyweight division, and Dawson is one of them. Hopkins already beat Jean Pascal, but Dawson remains as well as Tavoris Cloud, Beibut Shumenov and Nathan Cleverly.

Hopkins may see the California Athletic Commissions’ ruling as a victory, but he could be deceiving himself, because there still is the perception out there that Hopkins took the easy way out rather than staying in the Dawson fight until the bitter end. And by not immediately trying to get a rematch with him, it looks as if Hopkins doesn’t want any part of facing Dawson again to some boxing fans. The Commission can take away a lot but they can’t change opinions that have already formed by fans from watching Hopkins perform in that fight.