Hopkins may skip Dawson challenge

Bernard Hopkins, coming off a victory that made him the oldest major world champion in boxing history, is looking at a mandatory title defence against Chad Dawson.

But Hopkins’s promoter, Richard Schaefer, told ESPN he would look for contract loopholes that might enable him to have Hopkins face another rival instead.

Hopkins defeated Canada’s Jean Pascal by unanimous decision on Saturday in Montreal to claim the World Boxing Council light-heavyweight crown at age 46.

The victory enabled Hopkins, 52-5 with two drawn and 32 knockouts, to break the age mark for title-taking set by heavyweight George Foreman in 1994 at 45, delivering a knockout blow to Father Time as well.

The WBC’s mandatory challenger is Dawson, who stepped aside from a title bout to allow a Pascal-Hopkins rematch of last year’s controversial draw in exchange for an undercard bout and a chance to face the winner for the crown.

Southpaw Dawson, 28, is 30-1 with 17 knockouts and suffered his only pro defeat at the hands of Pascal last August in Montreal. Dawson is a former WBC and International Boxing Federation (IBF) light-heavyweight champion.

While Hopkins said the Dawson fight would likely happen in about six months and that he would fight until he was 50 years old, Hopkins also called out another Canadian-based fighter, unbeaten super middleweight Lucian Bute.

Bute, 28-0 with 23 knockouts, is set to defend his IBF super-middleweight title on July 9 in his homeland of Romania against unbeaten French Jean-Paul Mendy, 29-0 with one draw and 16 knockouts.

Bute, who has not fought outside Canada in five years, is signed to a rival telecast network than Hopkins, so that could scuttle a Bute-Hopkins bout in the short term.