By Allan Fox: We saw how 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins was able to get under the skin of Chad Dawson enough to where he lost his temper and angrily picked Hopkins up and dropped him on the canvas in the 2nd round in their fight last October. Hopkins, whether you believe it or not, was injured during the fall and it caused the fight to be halted. Dawson blew it for himself by getting annoyed with Hopkins and reporting to lifting him up and dropping him.

You can believe that Hopkins will probably be trying to get Dawson upset again this fight because it can work in his favor if Dawson is fighting with anger instead of remaining calm. An angry Dawson could report to roughhouse tactics in response to Hopkins’ holding and other in fighting techniques.

All it takes is for Dawson to bump or foul Hopkins in any way and we could see Hopkins hitting the canvas with a fight ending injury. It’s one thing if Hopkins hits the deck once the fight had done past the 4th round, because the fight will go to the cards if Hopkins gets injured. But if Dawson angrily roughs Hopkins up in response to something real or imagined that Hopkins did to him in the early going, we could see Hopkins hit the deck and not be able to get up again. It would be another way for fight to end up as a no contest again. In a no contest, Hopkins retains his WBC title and then can likely move forward to a summer fight against WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly.

Above all, Dawson has to keep his composure at all times and not get upset if Hopkins grabs him on the inside and tries to rough him up. It’s not personal. Hopkins has always been a rough inside fighter similar to Andre Ward. That’s not Dawson’s style of fighting and if he resorts to fighting Hopkins in that kind of game, he’ll be giving away most of his strengths. Dawson’s best at boxing and staying at a distance. He should be trying to retaliate to the things that Hopkins does because he’ll end up doing this all night long.

Dawson was able to keep control over his emotions in wins over Antonio Tarver and Adrian Diaconu in the past couple of years. Dawson didn’t fight well against Jean Pascal in August of 2010, looking fearful of mixing it up with him. Dawson can’t be afraid to mix it up with Hopkins if he wants to win this fight.