By Dan Ambrose: On Saturday night, 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) will likely be passing his WBC light heavyweight title to challenger Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) in their HBO televised fight. On top of giving up his World Boxing Council title, Hopkins will effectively be crowning the 29-year-old Dawson as the best fighter in the light heavyweight division with his victory.

To be sure, Dawson would still have to beat a handful of guys like Jean Pascal, Beibut Shumenov, Nathan Cleverly and Tavoris Cloud, but for the most part the win over Hopkins will do the trick in terms of making Dawson as the top guy in the division.

Hopkins, however, won’t be an easy out, because he’ll briefly try and punch with Dawson before going into his shutdown smothering defensive mode where Hopkins clinches Dawson constantly, flops on the canvas and does other such kinds of time consuming tactics. Hopkins will have a number of tricks to use to not only survive the fight but also shut down Dawson’s offense by using up by time by grabbing him, falling on the canvas from imaginary fouls.

It’s going to be up to Dawson to fight through those tricks to make sure he gets the win out of it. He should do more than enough to get the victory, but the main question is whether he’ll be given the decision.

Hopkins isn’t going to willingly pass the torch to Dawson on Saturday night. If things start going really bad for Hopkins, he’ll likely slow the fight down to a crawl and lose in that manner.