By Dan Ambrose: 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) will try and reach into his old bag of tricks in order to get him past 29-year-old two-time light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) on April 28th at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Hopkins will be defending his WBC light heavyweight strap and will have a mighty tough time keeping it this time. Hopkins dodged a real bullet in his last fight against Dawson last October when Hopkins fell to the canvas early in the 2nd round and injured his left shoulder before the fight really got heated up.

It’s still kind of hard to guess how the rest of the fight would have been like, but at the time that Hopkins fell down, Dawson was the bigger and stronger and looked to be in control when things fell apart.

Hopkins didn’t want the rematch and was hoping to get a more lucrative fight against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute or a fight against WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly. However, the World Boxing Council threw a monkey wrench into Hopkins plans by ordering an immediate rematch between Hopkins and Dawson. This came after Dawson’s promoter Gary Shaw appealed to the WBC to have an immediate rematch because it would have unfair for Hopkins to move on when their last fight was ruled a non contest.

Hopkins really doesn’t match up well with the 6’1″ Dawson. Hopkins doesn’t have Dawson’s outside game, his slickness, speed or defensive skills. Hopkins is still good at fighting on the inside, but Dawson is too big and too powerful to be trapped against the ropes. He doesn’t allow fighters to bull him to the ropes, and Hopkins wasn’t having any luck at all trying to force an inside fight against Dawson. Things weren’t going Hopkins’ way at the time he fell down in the second round.