Bernard Hopkins completed a stunning accomplishment Saturday evening as he won a unanimous decision over Jean Pascal an become the oldest man to win a legitimate title in boxing history. George Foreman held the previous record at 45 and now Hopkins holds the record at 46. There were some concerns about what kind of judging he might receive in Montreal, but he sufficiently dominated Pascal to secure the victory
The question now is who Hopkins will fight next. In the post-fight interview, Hopkins claimed he wanted to fight until he was 50. If that's the case, he's looking at approximately four to eight more fights. There has been discussion that the winner of Hopkins-Pascal would fight Chad Dawson if Dawson defeated Adrian Diaconu. Well, Dawson has won and Hopkins as when, thus setting up the fight.
Hopkins also mentioned Lucian Bute as a second opponent. However, beyond those two, one name that I think could show up in discussions would be that of Oakland super middleweight champion Andre Ward. Later this year, Ward will face the winner of Carl Froch and Glen Johnson in the Super Six finals. If he wins that fight, it would not be surprising to see Ward face Bute as well. Whether it's before or after Hopkins remains to be seen.
Pending Ward actually beating the winner of Froch-Johnson and then potentially beating Bute, one has to wonder if Bernard Hopkins would want a piece of the super middleweight champion. Hopkins indicated after the fight that he not only wants to continue fighting, but he wants to continue fighting top level competition. The super middleweight and light heavyweight divisions are close enough that I don't think it would take much work to make this fight happen.
More importantly, we would conceivably have a battle of similar technical, entertaining "dirty" styles. Ward fights a smart fight much in the way Hopkins has done throughout his career and it would make for an intriguing potential passing of the torch type of fight. I haven't seen a single word on this and so this is just speculation on my part. Nonetheless, if everything fell the right way in fights leading up to it, Ward-Hopkins makes too much sense.