By Dan Ambrose: It’s pretty much academic at this point that 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) will be losing to Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) in their rematch on April 28th at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, U.S. That’s pretty much a given. Hopkins is way too old, way too slow and way too fragile to come out on top in this fight. The thing is Hopkins has a nice paying bout looming ahead against the WBO light heavyweight paper champion Nathan Cleverly in Wales this summer if Cleverly doesn’t get stripped of his title for failing to fight his mandatory challenger.

Cleverly and his promoter Frank Warren are totally dialed in to a fight against Hopkins. Cleverly wants Hopkins so bad that he doesn’t care if he gets beaten by Dawson. He STILL wants to fight him in the summer in Wales no matter what. It doesn’t seem sporting or traditional to fight the loser of a fight instead of the winner, but maybe that’s how Cleverly likes to do things. Whatever the case, Hopkins probably will still get the Cleverly payday fight even if he gets beaten by Dawson on April 28th.

However, there obviously are limitations here. If Hopkins gets REALLY dominated to the point where he looks old and feeble than I think the chances of him getting the Cleverly payday fight go down dramatically. He’s got to at least make Dawson fight hard to get the win and ideally win at least a few rounds in the process of getting dominated by him. Maybe if Hopkins can grab Dawson and get him into a wrestling match on the inside all night long, with a referee that puts up with instead of taking points off for holding. If Hopkins can wrestle Dawson enough to limit his punch output to the lows 20s, Hopkins can still say he won even though he’ll clearly lose. It’ll be kind of like the Joe Calzaghe vs. Hopkins fight where Hopkins said he should have won the fight afterwards despite having clinched often.

The point is Hopkins can’t get totally beaten if he wants to get the Cleverly fight. I could be wrong. They may opt to fight Hopkins even if he’s made to look 60-years-old by Dawson. I think they just want his name on Cleverly’s resume above all and don’t seem interested in taking on a live fighter like Dawson. They want Hopkins’ scalp. It seems rather superficial to me, like getting a degree from a prestigious school like Harvard that you didn’t have to really work hard to get.