By Scott Gilfoid: Having seen the IBF title fight last Saturday night between champion Chad Dawson and challenger Antonio Tarver, I think Dawson would have beaten former WBO super middleweight Joe Calzaghe had it been him in the ring instead of 40-year-old Tarver. Dawson looked good for the most part, showing fast hand speed, good power and excellent defense. Dawson controlled almost the entire 12-round fight with Tarver and only had a problem when Dawson eased off the throttle in the last two rounds.
Dawson, 26, looked good enough to beat the best of the light heavyweights as well as the super middleweights in pounding out a 12-round decision over Tarver. It was only an interesting bout in that Tarver tried at least to overcome Dawson’s superb skills, but in the end Tarver didn’t have the tools necessary to do the job.
Dawson said later that he had hopes that Calzaghe would want to fight him after seeing the fight. Dawson, however, is a completely different fighter than what Calzaghe has faced in his career, and I don’t imagine that Calzaghe would want to step out of retirement to face an A class fighter like Dawson.
I got to give Tarver some credit. Antonio tried hard to take the fight to the young Dawson, even though it meant that Tarver was going to have to absorb all kinds of punishment by Dawson. Tarver didn’t care and kept coming forward, getting hammered by Dawson’s fast left hands and right hooks.
Dawson had no problems winning the first half of the fight, and continued to glide towards victory into the 11th round, when Dawson started running out the clock in the fight by focusing on his defense rather than offense. Calzaghe would have had a tough time against the speed of Dawson and with his power.
Chad hits too hard and has too much size for a fighter like Calzaghe to deal with properly, and I could see Calzaghe taking big shots from both hands of Dawson as Calzaghe tries to land his slaps. The shots that Dawson was landing on Tarver in Saturday’s fight, would have likely knocked Calzaghe into next week.
Calzaghe had problems taking big shots in his last two fights against Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. Dawson looked like a fighter on a whole different level as he came forward, hitting Tarver with strong left hands and hooks. Dawson landed really well to the body, and was putting a lot of power into his big body shots.
Tarver took the punches, but wasn’t able to fire back with anything near as hard as what Dawson was throwing at him. Dawson, as well as a number of boxing fans, was hoping that Calzaghe would see the Dawson-Tarver II fight and decide that it was a good opportunity to prove himself against the talented American fighter.
Even though it wasn’t one of the best of performances by Dawson, I expect that Calzaghe won’t come close to returning to the ring to fight him. Dawson isn’t like many of the slow and marginal opponents that Calzaghe built his unbeaten record on and it would be a fight where Calzaghe would be facing a type of fighter that he had never seen before in his career.
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