By Allan Fox: If WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) wants to walk out of the Boardwalk Hall arena still the in possession of his World Boxing Council title on April 28th, he’s going to have to follow Jean Pascal’s blueprint in how to beat the younger 29-year-old Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s).

Whatever game plan that Hopkins was using in his last fight against Dawson last October, it wasn’t working because Hopkins looked slow, small, old and confused against the bigger 6’3′ Dawson. It looked bad for Hopkins until he suffered an injury that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for him. The injury likely saved Hopkins from suffering a potentially humiliating loss to Dawson, because the fight was halted before it had gone enough rounds for Hopkins to receive a knockout loss. By getting injured in the 2nd, Hopkins was able to retain his WBC title.

Hopkins needs to stay in one piece in the rematch because it would be bad for boxing to have him dropping like flies with injuries left and right every time he fights Chad Dawson. But what Hopkins needs to do is attack Dawson in explosive flurries by throwing fast shots with his head lowered in the ramming position while charging forward. This is what Pascal did against Dawson and it was highly effective because Dawson had a hard time with Pascal’s hand speed and head.

Later in the fight when Pascal was out on his feet from being hurt from a flurry of shots by Dawson, Pascal’s head down style of coming in arguably saved him from being knocked out because Pascal’s head collided with the face of Dawson, opening up a large cut above his right eye. The referee did the rest of the work by stopping the fight instead of letting Dawson finish the round and letting his corner work on the cut.

Hopkins has lost a lot of speed and he doesn’t have the size or the power to stand in there with Dawson all night long. Some boxing fans think that Hopkins looked so bad last time because he was starting slowly and was going to come on like he did in his two fights against Jean Pascal. But I don’t think so. I think Hopkins was in the process of getting out-boxed by Dawson and there was nothing he could do to prevent that from happening. The injury tha Hopkins sustained really saved him unfortunately.