By Dan Ambrose: Former two time WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (31-2, 17 KO’s) is blaming his weight for him losing to WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward in a 10th round TKO defeat last year in September.
Dawson claims the process of draining down from his natural weight class of 175 to 168 left him without his usual energy that he normally has. He says that’s one of the reasons why Ward kept knocking him down in that fight. Dawson hit the deck three times in the fight, once in the 3rd, 4th and 10th round.
Dawson said to Chris Byrd at Byrd’s Eye View “We [Ward] definitely got to do it again at 175. Eventually he’ll come to 175 and I’ll be right there.”
Byrd asked Dawson if he would be interested in moving up to cruiserweight and then heavyweight to look for bigger and better things, but the 30-year-old Dawson said “I’ve got too much unfinished business at 175.”
Dawson does have unfinished business against Jean Pascal, who he’s scheduled to fight on May 25th at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada. Dawson may take a tune-up bout before that; however, because he doesn’t want to just sit and wait all that time before he steps inside the ring.
The only other fights for Dawson at 175 besides the Pascal fight is against WBO champion Nathan Cleverly, IBF champ Tavoris Cloud and WBA champ Beibut Shumenov. Once Dawson has gotten those four fighters out of the way then he can move up to cruiserweight or heavyweight. If Dawson wants to wait on Ward, then it might take a little while longer because he may not get that fight right away given that Ward has no plans of moving up to 175 just yet. Ward still wants to face Mikkel Kessler and Carl Froch again before he moves up in weight.
There won’t be any point in Dawson talking about a Ward rematch if he gets beat again by Pascal. Dawson should focus on trying to win that fight first because Pascal really had his number three years ago.
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