By Jim Dower: Two time light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (29-0, 17 KO’s) is really wasting his time and his career at light heavyweight, where there are no big names for him to fight aside from Bernard Hopkins. However, Hopkins doesn’t seem remotely interested in mixing it up with the 28-year-old Dawson. With few other opponents to fight at light heavyweight, Dawson has been forced to fight the old timers of the light heavyweight division Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson. Now that both of those fighters have been beaten twice a piece, Dawson is now going to be taking on World Boxing Council light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (25-1, 16 KO’s) this Saturday night at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada.

Dawson, 6’1”, is going to have a huge height and reach advantage over the listed 5’11” Pascal. While Pascal is listed as being 5’11”, he looked to be the exact same height as his last opponent, 5’9” Adrian Diaconu. Dawson is going to look like a giant compared to the smallish Pascal, and if the size wasn’t enough of a problem for Pascal in this fight, then Dawson’s superior power and hand speed will be another reason why Dawson easily beats Pascal in front of Jean’s home audience in Montreal.

It’s sad that Dawson has had to wait nine whole months for this fight to take place due to Pascal’s shoulder problems from his last fight against Diaconu. In hindsight, Dawson should have moved on a long time ago and went down to super middleweight to fight the likes of Lucian Bute rather than giving up roughly a year of his career to waiting around for the Pascal fight. That shows you how few options there are at light heavyweight.

If there was another exciting opponent in the division that the boxing fans cared about who would bring big money for Dawson, he could have fought another fight while waiting on Pascal’s injured shoulder to heal. Instead, Dawson lost almost a year and now he’s fighting someone in an okay but not a mega fight in Pascal’s home city. I think it’s a waste of Dawson’s career. He’d be much better off devoting his career to fighting at super middleweight against guys like Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Mikkel Kessler, Bute and Carl Froch.

That’s the hot division right now, not the light heavyweight division. At light heavyweight, there’s only Pascal and Tavoris Cloud and we saw Cloud barely beat the 41-year-old Glen Johnson last weekend. Cloud looked horrible to say the least. No defense, huge stamina issues and not fighting smart. Dawson would pick Cloud clean in a one-sided fight. If HBO is willing to put this fight on and give Dawson a big payday, then so be it. But I think Dawson is much better off moving down in weight after he dominates Pascal this Saturday night. There’s really no point in fighting the likes of Cloud or Beibut Shumenov. Those guys don’t have the skills needed to hang with Dawson and it wouldn’t make for interesting fights.