By Eric Thomas: It now looks as if IBF light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (28-0, 17 KOs) will be fighting his number #3 ranked opponent Glen Johnson (49-12-2, 33 KOs) after all according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. It seems as if Dawson and his promoter Gary Shaw have had a change of heart about fighting the powerful pressure fighter Johnson once more after Dawson had a tough time beating him last year in April, a fight which Dawson had to battle hard to win in a close 12 round decision over the 40-year-old Johnson

Apparently, Johnson is a fight that can be more easily made than Dawson’s other fights that he has an interest in setting up against big named opponents like Bernard Hopkins, Carl Froch, Lucian Bute and Mikkel Kessler.

In the absence of getting fights against them, there are not a lot of other options available for Dawson at super middleweight or light heavyweight. HBO is interested in the fight, as well a large amount of the hardcore boxing fans that saw the first fight between Dawson and Johnson, which turned out to be much more exciting than Dawson’s two recent fights against an over-matched Antonio Tarver.

Dawson has shown a tendency as of late to take it easy after building up a lead over his opponents and finds himself losing a lot of rounds because of his lapses of concentration.

The good thing about Johnson is that he keeps the pressure on his opponents by forcing them to fight hard or else get knocked out. This more or less what happened in the Dawson-Johnson fight last year. Dawson build up an early lead with his quickness, power and pinpoint shots, but then he eased off the pedal in the later rounds and found himself taking a lot of punishment at the hands of Johnson.

Dawson picked things up in the 12th and appeared to win the last round to get a narrow decision but it was very close because of the many rounds that he gave away to Johnson. This time, Dawson is going to have to fight much harder if he wants to beat Johnson because no doubt Glen has studied his loss to Dawson from the first fight and will be looking to put more pressure on Chad from the beginning of the fight so that Johnson doesn’t lose the early rounds like last time out.

Although Dawson has some of the best physical and defensive tools in the light heavyweight division, he seems to lack the ability to fight hard for 12 rounds. Whether it’s a physical or a mental thing is unknown, but what we do know is that unless Dawson figures out how to fix it, he’ll find himself barely beating fighters like Johnson that he could easily defeat if he were able to fight hard for 12 continuous rounds without letting up.

In terms of overall talent, there’s no comparison between Johnson and Dawson. It’s obvious that Dawson has the better tools, but he just doesn’t seem to handle pressure well because it makes Dawson have to fight harder than he likes to. Applying pressure is exactly what Johnson specializes in and what makes him so good despite his advanced age.