Dawson Defeats Tarver, But Disappoints

By Boxing News - 05/10/2009 - Comments

By Jim Slattengren: International Boxing Federation (IBF) light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (28-0, 17 KOs) defeated former IBF champion Antonio Tarver (26-6, 19 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Hard Rock Café, in Las Vegas. The fight was close with the 40-year-old Tarver applying steady pressure throughout and making Dawson looked like the old man at times.

If there was any chance of Joe Calzaghe coming out of retirement to fight Dawson, this performance probably gave Calzaghe second thoughts about it. Dawson, 26, failed to let his hands go enough in the fight, and fought too cautiously through much of the fight, letting Tarver dictate the pace.

With Dawson’s many advantages coming into the bout – speed, power, size and youth – it looked bad to see the 40-year-old Tarver outworking the young Dawson, and giving him problems in the last two rounds of the fight. Dawson allowed Tarver to make the bout closer than it would have otherwise been.

The judges’ scored it 116-112, 117-111 and 117-111. The good thing is that in looking mortal against Tarver, Dawson might have a better chance at fighting the 44-year-old Bernard Hopkins, because it’s doubtful that Hopkins would want to fight the lethal version of Dawson that appeared in the first fight with Tarver last year.

Dawson still looked damn good for most of the fight, clearly better than what Tarver was doing in the ring. Tarver was throwing a lot of shots, but missing many and having a lot of them blocked on the gloves of Dawson.

The harder and more accurate shots were landed by Dawson, who also had the speed advantage. It seemed that Tarver was just throwing a lot of punches and hoping for the best, but few actually landed in comparison to the huge amount of punches that Tarver was throwing.

Despite not looking entirely his best, Dawson’s defense was impeccable, as he blocked a high number of punches from Tarver and was hit only 121 times of the 749 punches thrown by Tarver. The way Dawson looked tonight, I think he’d easily beat Hopkins. Dawson would likely pick off Hopkins punches and fire back with fast combinations.

Over the last part of the fight, Hopkins would wear down and not be able to continue fighting hard. Dawson would be the stronger fighter, harder puncher and the much faster fighter as well.

Up until this fight, Tarver had a perfect 3-0 record of winning his next bouts following a defeat. Dawson put an end to this bit of statistics forever. The loss for Tarver puts him in an uncomfortable situation of now having lost his last two fights.

At 40, Tarver may have to consider retiring from boxing, because it won’t be easy for him to bounce back from this and it will take a lot of time before Tarver gets another shot at a title. Time isn’t something that Tarver has too much left. Tarver gave it his all in two fights with Dawson, but Tarver didn’t have the fire power needed to get the decision.



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