By Dan Ambrose: WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins has finally started to show his age after all these years. At 47, Hopkins is one of the oldest world champions of all time and that’s a testament to how good he is, but also how poor the light heavyweight is at this time. For him to beat WBC champion Jean Pascal with ease last year gives you a good indication about how weak the division is right now.

Hopkins, however, showed age in his last fight against Chad Dawson last October, and he got lucky to escape from that fight with a 2nd round no decision because it didn’t look good for him if he had stayed on his feet and fought the entire 12 rounds. Dawson was too quick, strong, power and skilled for Hopkins in that fight.

In a way, Hopkins is getting a huge gift in being able to fight Dawson again because he’s now had a lot of time to study what he did wrong in their October fight and he can now try and fix it in the rematch on April 28th at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, in New Jersey. However, it may be that Hopkins can’t fix what was broke last time out.

Hopkins just looked too old, too slow, too weak and too unequipped for the job. He could probably study the film until he’s blue in the face and still end up getting slaughtered by Dawson on April 28th. There are just too many variables that Hopkins has to cover. He’s like a guy trying to plug a leak in a dam. He thinks he’s doing good when he’s got one leak plugged up, but then five more pop up. Dawson has too many ways to beat the aging Hopkins, and all he’s got are tricks, such as holding, wrestling and slowing the fight down to a crawl using various tactics.

Dawson showed in the first fight that he can nullify whatever tactics that Hopkins can come up with by jabbing him, moving away when Hopkins could go to hold and breaking free of him on the inside when Hopkins grabs him. In the rematch, Hopkins will very likely choose to hold even more than he did last time, so it’s going to require a referee to pull Hopkins off of Dawson at times because it could be glue for Dawson if Hopkins continues to hold for long stretches to ride out the rounds.