I think Bute is very skilled and he hits hard, (I think harder than Dawson), but he doesn't have the size, height, and reach that Dawson does. I'd like to see Hopkins be in a position where his opponent makes him come foward. Now, I'm not entirely sure that this will be the case given the fact that Hopkins has a way of making his opponents fight his fight, as was the case with Tarver for example. But even in the fight against Tarver, for several stretches of the fight he was using affective pressure and aggression to score against Tarver and win rounds early in a way to make Tarver feel like he needed to come foward against Bernard later in the fight. Dawson is a guy that is terrible at fighting coming foward. People like to claim his multi dimensional, but he's not. He's just very good at keeping his opponent on the outside and using his combination of height, reach, and speed to out box them. An example of a multi dimensional fighter is Ward who can do both, but Dawson doesn't share this characteristic. He looks incredibly uncomfortable coming foward, and if Hopkins can manage to make him come foward, Dawson will be in a world of pain. However, if Dawson fights on the outside he can win a debatable (like almost all victories against Hopkins) decision where it will look like he didn't do enough to win, but they'll give him the fight anyway.
Dawson would probably force him to be aggressive. He has the height, reach, and speed, to stay on the outside.
Hopkins should just go ahead and fight Dawson. He probably doesn't want to = not because he thinks he can't beat him - but because he thinks the judges will give the fight to Dawson like they did with his fights with Jermain Taylor and Calzaghe. Hopkins has to avoid faster fighters at this age or else he loses decisions in fights where he was never really hit, hurt or outboxed.
That's what I see too. But Dawson also has questionable heart, so Hopkins could put on a good performance.
