Steward concerned with Dawson losing focus during Hopkins bout

By Jason Kim: Trainer Emanuel Steward voiced some concerns he has with his fighter Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KO’s) as he heads into his October 15th fight against WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) at the Staples Center, Los Angeles, California. Steward is worried about the 29-year-old Dawson losing mental focus during the fight and letting Hopkins back into the fight. Steward has noticed this problem with Dawson in his other fights, and he’s worried that he fall into the same trap against Hopkins.

In an interview at East Side Boxing’s On the Ropes Boxing Radio program, Steward said “He [Dawson] does have a tendency to kind of drift sometimes and go in and out, and that’s my biggest concern…My biggest challenge is to have this man totally focused throughout the fight all the way, especially when you’re going to have a crowd that every time Bernard just makes a feint or something the crowd is going to go crazy.”

Steward is right, of course. Dawson does let up on guys after dominating them for a certain amount of rounds. I’ve seen this in Dawson’s fights against Glen Johnson, Antonio Tarver and recently against Adrian Diaconu. In each of those fights, Dawson would suddenly stop punching and just cover up and allow his opponents to control different rounds, making the fights a lot closer than they should have been.

In Dawson’s fight against Jean Pascal, he just never got un-tracked at all despite being urged on by his trainer. By the time Dawson did turn up the heat in the 11th, he needed a knockout to win and he was unable to make that happen after suffering a cut from a head clash. Again, it was Dawson failing to stay focused and follow through with the instructions that were being given to him in his corner.

Steward has a tough job because getting Dawson to do exactly what he’s told for three minutes of every round is going to be a battle all to itself. If he fights hard for three minutes of every round, he’ll no doubt beat Hopkins. But that’s the whole problem. Dawson takes his foot off the accelerator and tends to coast when he’s doing well.

Dawson can’t do this with Hopkins because the crowd will be in his favor and even the rounds where Dawson is appearing to dominate the action may end up going in Hopkins’ favor because of the crowd favoring him. Judges sometimes seem to be influenced by crowd noise when scoring rounds, so we could have a fight that is still close even when Dawson is totally dominating the action. He can’t afford to let off because you just don’t know how the judges are going to be scoring the rounds. Hopkins is the more popular fighter and that’s something that could make it harder for Dawson to get the decision.

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