By Michael Lieberman: Undefeated light heavyweight Chad Dawson (26-0, 17 KOs) did a smart thing when he decided not to defend his title against Adrian Diaconu in Romania, and instead giving up the title to the Romanian fighter. Although the fight would have given the 25 year-old Dawson his biggest career payday of a million dollars, it was hardly worth the bother – or the risk, for that matter – because Showtime cable network, which has a contractor with Dawson, reportedly wasn’t interested in seeing Dawson fight Diaconu, preferring much more to see Dawson face the more popular IBF light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver instead.

At the same time, Dawson would have been facing a very tough atmosphere in traveling to Romania and having to fight Diaconu in front of a hostile crowd, a fight which would have placed a lot of pressure on Dawson to try and knock Diaconu out in order to avoid on the receiving end of a home town decision loss. Already, Chris Henry, a top light heavyweight, had recently lost a very questionable 12-round decision to Diaconu in Romania.

Clearly, this was a fate that Dawson may have wanted to avoid happen too, and could have been an additional factor in helping shape his decision not to face Diaconu after all. As things work out, if the bout against Tarver can be made, Dawson will likely be much better off, for it’s a fight that will be shown live on Showtime, with a huge audience of boxing fans watching it, and Dawson will be fighting a much more popular fighter.

Best of all, if Dawson is successful, he gets to capture another light heavyweight title with Roy Jones, Clinton Woods and Tavoris Cloud resting at the three through five spots in the rankings below him.

If Dawson does sign the contract with Tarver, the bout will likely take place on October 11th, which is also the same night as Samuel Peter defends his WBC heavyweight title against Vitali Klitschko. The addition of that fight to the package would be potentially giving the Dawson-Tarver much more attention than it would have otherwise, and worlds more than if Dawson had elected to defend his title against WBC light heavyweight mandatory Diaconu, a fighter that few Americans have ever seen fight.

Dawson is coming off a 12-round unanimous decision win over veteran Glen Johnson in April, a fight which was very close up until the end when Dawson pulled away from the tiring Johnson and did enough to win the latter rounds of the fight. Dawson is seen by many boxing fans and writers alike to be the best light heavyweight in the division. Although the Johnson fight may have caused some doubts about that to creep into the minds of many of the boxing fans.

However, there’s little question that Dawson won the fight from what I saw of it, and it wasn’t all that close. Dawson appeared to dominate the slower Johnson in almost every round of the fight. Dawson has been chasing Tarver for the past year, calling him out constantly without any success. Up until now, I didn’t think that it was possible for Tarver to have a change of mind, because he seemed more content with fighting lesser-named fighters and going after the weaker champions like Clinton Woods rather than taking a risky fight against a fighter as fast and as talented as Dawson. However, I guess now enough money is being put on the table, we may be seeing Tarver agreeing to fight with Dawson after all.

That’s a relief for many boxing fans because the light heavyweight division badly needs a match of this kind to bring more interest to the division, which have been rather stale and boring in the past couple of years since Roy Jones Jr. faded from the top of the division. Dawson would figure to be much too fast and skilled for the 39 year-old Tarver, who although looked good against Woods in taking the IBF title from him in April, he doesn’t have anywhere near the boxing skills to beat a fighter as young and as talented as the 25 year-old Dawson, the way I see it.

It’ll be a good fight, though, and I don’t think that Dawson will get through it completely unscathed because Tarver, if anything, can still punch well if he’s allowed to stand and pot shot from the outside. He obviously won’t be able to do it as often as he would like, however, because Tarver will keep a constant flow of incoming shots pouring down on him than what he’s seen in many years. I see the fight as a lopsided 12-round decision for Dawson, who will give the slower, older Tarver a boxing lesson.