By Dan Ambrose: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This will be the case for 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins (51-5-2, 32 KO’s), who was dropped twice by WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (26-1-1, 16 KO’s) in a 12 round draw in December. Hopkins thought he should have won the fight, but getting knocked down twice was too much for Hopkins to make up for in the remainder of the fight.

The WBC has given Hopkins the chance at an immediate rematch instead of making him wait, like most fighters have to do when they fail to do enough to get a win. According to news from The Ring, Hopkins will be given a chance to get it right a second time by facing Pascal in May in a fight that will be shown on HBO, and will have former WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson on the undercard.

Pascal had a clause in his contract with Dawson for their fight last year that said that Pascal had to give Dawson a rematch after letting Pascal get in one interim fight. Pascal has since had the interim fight with Hopkins, but the WBC has said that Pascal has to fight Hopkins again. It looks like Dawson is okay with the Hopkins-Pascall II fight going ahead of his rematch, because there hasn’t been any word from Dawson complaining about this.

Dawson could be matched tough against either Librado Andrade (29-3, 22 KO’s), a former super middleweight who should have a knockout win on his record for his first fight with IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute. And the other fighter Dawson could be facing is Adrian Diaconu (27-2, 15 KO’s). The winner of that fight will then take on Hopkins-Pascal II winner.

One would hope that Hopkins won’t bail on that option if he comes out the winner, because he’s been saying that he wants to fight Bute. If he does this, then Dawson, if he wins his preliminary fight, then he would have the less than pleasing option to then fight Pascal, who’s popularity will be about zero because of his two fights with Hopkins. Not exactly a pleasing situation for Dawson if Hopkins decides to take off after the second Pascal fight.

Hopkins is going to have to try and stay on his feet this time because the fight will no doubt be taking place in Canada again, because Hopkins isn’t a huge ticket seller in the U.S. The fight will only sell well in Canada, and over there, they won’t give Hopkins much credit if he keeps getting knocked down left and right and then crying that he should have been given the win. Challengers are supposed to stay on their feet, not get knocked down twice and then claim victory.