Dawson vs. Pascal on August 14th – News

By Jim Dower: Former International Boxing Federation/WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (29-0, 17 KO’s) and Jean Pascal (25-1, 16 KO’s) have agreed to fight on August 14th, in a fight that will be shown on HBO at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The August 14th date is two months later than people thought that fight would take place. Previously, it was believed that Dawson and Pascal would fight on June 19th. However, according to Ringtv, Pascal’s recently surgically repaired right shoulder needs more time to recover.

Shoulder injuries, especially the type that require surgery, often take long periods of time for recovering from surgery. It’s questionable whether even this amount of time will be enough for Pascal to be back at 100%. Pascal, 27, injured his shoulder in December in a 12 round decision win over Adrian Diaconu. Pascal’s shoulder came out of the socket during the 4th round. Later on in the fight, he injured his shoulder again after attempting to throw a hard right hand.

Dawson, 27, easily defeated 41-year-old Glen Johnson in November in a rematch that boxing fans wanted, but not Dawson. However, like first fight, Dawson out-worked Johnson and won a clear cut decision. In fighting Pascal, Dawson will end up wasting nine months before he finally fights him for his old WBC light heavyweight title. It hardly seems worth waiting for. Dawson and his promoter should think about squeezing a fight in between so he doesn’t just waste time waiting for Pascal’s injured shoulder to be rehabilitated.

Pascal is a good fighter with excellent hand speed. However, he ran out of gas in a fight against Carl Froch in a 12 round decision loss in December 2008. Froch walked Pascal down, forcing him to fight much harder than he wanted to. Pascal fought well in the first six rounds, but the faded badly in the last six rounds and ended up getting beaten.

At 5’11”, Pascal will be giving up two inches in height and a huge 11” inches in reach to Dawson. Pascal will also not have a speed advantage over Dawson, to boot. Dawson is just as fast, if not faster than Pascal in terms of hand speed. The only thing that Pascal will have an advantage for this fight is that the bout will be taking place in the adopted country of Canada. There could be as many as 17,000 pro-Pascal fans at the fight.

9 Responses to “Dawson vs. Pascal on August 14th – News”