Stevenson’s promoter: If Adonis doesn’t beat Dawson it could be a long time before he gets another world title shot

By Boxing News - 06/08/2013 - Comments

stevenson222By Allan Fox: At 35-years-old, Adonis Stevenson (20-1, 17 KO’s) is in a must win situation tonight against WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (31-2, 17 KO’s) in their HBO televised fight at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. A loss for Stevenson will put him in a situation where it might take him one-two years get another title shot. At his age he can’t afford that because there’s no telling how much time the Canadian has left with his boxing career.

Stevenson’s promoter Yvon Michel said this about Stevenson’s situation as quoted by RingTV: If Adonis Stevenson doesn’t win this fight, it could be a very long time before we see another world championship fight here.”

If Stevenson loses to Dawson, he’ll have to work his way back into a position to get a title shot against him or one of the other champions. I’m sure that Michel can convince one of the other light heavyweight world champions to fight Stevenson by letting them know how much money would be available from the large gate in Canada. However, it’s still likely that Stevenson would have to wait a considerable amount of time before he could get another title shot.

Tonight, Stevenson has to make sure that doesn’t let Dawson get his game going because the American fighter is tough to beat when he’s clicking on all cylinders. Both guys are southpaws, and so it’s not going to be an advantage for Stevenson like he normally has. He’s going to have to use his speed and power to beat Dawson because he’s not going to have the southpaw element working for him. Stevenson also won’t be able to depend on being able to dominate with his jab like he’s done in the past against his opponents.

Dawson will have a three inch reach advantage over him and that means Stevenson won’t be able to land his jabs unless he can get close enough to Dawson to connect with them. Dawson backs up when his opponents come close to him, and he’s very good at getting out of the way of shots. He used to be trained by Floyd Mayweather Sr. who did a good job of teaching Dawson defensive skills. It’s too that Dawson stay with Mayweather Sr. because he was a better fighter when he was trained by him.



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