By Dan Ambrose: The last time Bernard Hopkins fought Chad Dawson, Hopkins went down early in the fight with an injured left shoulder that ended the fight for him. He was able to hold onto his WBC light heavyweight title when his appeal both to the California State Athletic Commission and World Boxing Council approved, resulting in Hopkins’ 2nd round TKO loss changed to a 2nd round no contest.

Dawson thinks Hopkins took the easy way out by faking an injury to get out of the fight. On Saturday night, Hopkins and Dawson will fight for a second time in a fight at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Dawson said this as quoted by USAtoday.com “I know why he’s [Hopkins] not talking. I know why he didn’t do the facedown at the press tour in New York City. It’s hard to stand in front of a guy who knows what really happened. I don’t want to just beat Bernard, I want to make him look stupid and make him look old.”

Hopkins is 47-years-old and Dawson only 29. As good as Hopkins was in his prime, he’s facing a younger guy with a tremendous amount of talent to go along with a size and speed advantage over Hopkins. Everyone gets old, and this is the wrong type of fighter for Hopkins to be facing at his advanced age. Dawson has already easily beaten Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson, two 40-year-olds. Now it looks as it it’s Hopkins’ turn.

Speaking about their fight last October, Dawson said “I saw a scared old man, a guy who really didn’t want to be in the ring.”

It’s hard to argue with that believe because Hopkins looked strangely timid, as he moved around the ring for the two rounds of the fight trying to keep away from the constantly stalking Dawson. When Hopkins would attempt to land anything, Dawson would fire back combinations that made Hopkins look old. It was strange how Hopkins changed so much from his fight against Jean Pascal earlier in the year when Hopkins beat Pascal, the WBC champion, by a 12 round decision in May of 2011.

Pascal had already beaten Dawson by a 11th round technical decision, albeit in a fight where Pascal’s head collided with the face of Dawson just when Pascal was staggering on the verge of a knockout. The fight was halted quickly, perhaps quickly by the referee without Dawson being allowed to continue fighting to try and finish Pascal off. Hopkins made it look easy against Pascal, but he seemed to have aged five years since then because Dawson was making it look effortless against Hopkins.

Hopkins for some reason hasn’t done any talking during the press tour for the Dawson fight, and that’s seem very strange. Dawson thinks it’s some kind of shame Hopkins is feeling, whereas some boxing fans think Hopkins is trying to keep from putting pressure on himself in case he can’t live up to it again. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway even if Hopkins did trash talk, because Dawson has fought too many fighters that do this and he’s immune to it.