By Jim Dower: Unbeaten light heavyweight Chad Dawson vacated his International Boxing Federation (IBF) title today in a move made to avoid having to take a fight against his number #1 mandatory challenger Tavoris Cloud (19-0, 18 KOs). Dawson, 26, and his promoter were hoping that the IBF would allow him to make an exception to fighting Cloud first by letting Dawson take a much more lucrative non-mandatory title defense against number #3 ranked Glen Johnson instead.
However, the IBF was having none of it and insisted that Dawson fight the little known Cloud instead. The thing of it is, HBO wasn’t interested in showing Dawson fight Cloud, so by Dawson going ahead defending his title against Cloud, Chad’s fight with him wouldn’t be shown on HBO and Dawson would end up making much less money than he would make in a fight with the 40-year-old Johnson, who HBO does want to show.
The 27-year-old Cloud has been seen only once on cable last year beating former IBF light heavyweight champion Julio Cesar Gonzalez by a 10th round stoppage in August 2008. Aside from that, Cloud has fought no one worth mentioning. Still, Dawson’s promoter Gary Shaw was open to Dawson fighting Cloud, and reportedly offered to have Cloud fight on the undercard of Dawson’s last bout against Antonio Tarver on May 9th in Las Vegas.
If Cloud had fought on the undercard, which would have been shown on HBO, Dawson would have then fought him next after the Tarver II fight. However, Shaw says that Cloud’s team turned down the offer. In hindsight, it seems like a bad move for Cloud’s team not to take Shaw up on the offer, for it would have given Cloud some badly needed exposure to the boxing public.
Right now, few fans have ever seen Cloud fight mostly because he hasn’t fought anyone of quality except for Gonzalez. For HBO to want to show a fighter as little known as Cloud, they prefer that they fight on undercards first to establish themselves before being put on as a main event.
This is why HBO had no interest in seeing Dawson vs. Cloud. Who knows? Perhaps Cloud’s team knew that Dawson might end up giving up the title when they opted for him not to fight on the undercard of Dawson’s last fight.
It would make Cloud’s job much easier in getting a title, because instead of beating a fighter like Dawson, Cloud would only have to beat the number #2 contender Clinton Woods, who is clearly less talented than Dawson.
It seems like a winning formula for Cloud if he wants to pick up a title without having to work as hard for it by having to go up against Dawson, a fighter that is perceived by the boxing world to be the number #1 light heavyweight on the planet.
As for Dawson, he’s going to go ahead with a planned bout against Johnson. The two previously fought in April 2008 with Dawson winning a close 12-round unanimous decision in a very entertaining fight. There was a certain chemistry between Dawson and Johnson on that night, because Johnson seemed to bring out the best in Dawson and forced him to fight much harder than he’s used to.
The final decision was controversial, however, because many boxing writers felt that Johnson had done enough to get the decision. I’m not one of them, but I can see how the outcome could have been perceived to an unfair one for Johnson, since he’s the one that was making the fight happen for the most part by applying constant on Dawson.
I still think that Dawson did more than enough to get the win. Never the less, its great news that Dawson is choosing to fight Johnson again rather than the unknown Cloud. I’ve seen Cloud’s fight against Gonzalez last year and I wasn’t very impressed with Cloud.
He doesn’t put his punches together, loads up with single shots and did little for long stretches in the fight until wakening in the 10th to take out the 32-year-old Gonzalez. I have little doubt that Dawson would have easily beaten Cloud had they fought.
For Dawson, this is the second time that he’s vacated one of his light heavyweight titles. The first time came last year when chose to give up his World Boxing Council (WBC) belt rather than keeping it and fighting the little known Adrian Diaconu in Romania.
Instead of fighting him for little money, Dawson got a big payday after he gave up the title and fought Antonio Tarver for his IBF light heavyweight title in October 2008, a fight which Chad easily won by a 12-round unanimous decision.
As talented as Dawson is, he really doesn’t need to be tied down by a title, wasting time fighting worthless mandatory challengers that the boxing public and the cable networks could care less about seeing. If Dawson can beat Johnson in his next bout, Chad can pretty much pick and choose whomever he wants to fight outside of Bernard Hopkins, who doesn’t want to fight Dawson for some reason.
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