By Dan Ambrose: Instead of pouring praise over his conqueror Chad Dawson last night after losing to him by a 12 round majority decision in Atlantic City, Bernard Hopkins suggests that he needed a knockout in order to beat the younger 29-year-old Dawson. Hopkins lost by the scores of 117-111, 117-111 and 114-114. It sure looked like Hopkins lost fair and square to me.

Hopkins said this after the fight as quoted by ESPN.com “What did he [Dawson] do to win that fight? They [the judges] did what they wanted to do. The only way I knew I would win is if I knocked him out. Let the public judge for themselves.”

I think the boxing public HAS judged the fight, and as far as I can tell pretty much everyone has Hopkins the loser to Dawson. There are a few lone voices out there who saw it as a win for Hopkins or a draw, but there aren’t too many of those fans. Hopkins simply didn’t throw enough punches to win. He spent a great portion of the fight clinching and moving on the edges of the ring. He wasn’t active enough and his pot shots that he would land from time to time wasn’t enough for him to compete with the busier Dawson. For his part, Dawson wasn’t letting his hands go all that much either, but he was clearly the aggressor in the fight and out-landing Hopkins in almost every round. There were a couple of rounds were both fighters landed with the same amount of shots, but even in those rounds, it was Dawson that was pushing the fight and I couldn’t give those rounds to Hopkins simply because he was fighting so passively as strictly a counter puncher.

When you’re not throwing enough punches to win and just clinching and using other tricks to try and get an edge, you’re not going to win the fight. Hopkins is kidding himself if he thinks that the boxing public will side with him because that’s not the case. This wasn’t the Joe Calzaghe vs. Hopkins fight where Hopkins fought well enough to where a significant portion of the boxing community saw him as the winner in that fight despite losing by a 12 round decision.

Last night, Hopkins clearly lost and he can ask the boxing public to judge for themselves all he wants, but I don’t think he’s going to like he finds. Hopkins may have to go to his fan club to find fans in significant numbers that saw him as the winner last night against Dawson, because it won’t be the boxing public that tells him what he wants to hear.