By Jason Kim: Before his rematch with Antonio Tarver on May 9th, International Boxing Federation light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson was thought to be the top fighter in the division by many fans who were impressed with Dawson’s wins over Tomasz Adamek, Eric Harding and Tarver.
However, there were still questions that remained about Dawson’s fight against Glen Johnson a year ago on April 12th in which Dawson had to struggle to defeat Johnson by a narrow decision.
The results didn’t go over well for many boxing fans who saw the fight and who felt that Dawson had struggled under the pressure from the 40-year-old Johnson, in particular in the last four rounds of the fight as Johnson took the fight to Dawson in rounds eight through twelve.
The only reason that Dawson was able to escape a lot of criticism about that fight was because of Dawson’s rematch clause with Tarver, which made it impossible for Dawson to give Johnson a rematch. However, after defeating Tarver for a second time earlier this month, beating him almost as bad as Dawson did in the first fight, it seemed like the obvious thing for Dawson to do was to turn his attention to Johnson so that Dawson could prove to the boxing public who the better fighter was and to shut some traps that were wondering why Dawson wasn’t looking to settle the controversy.
Instead, Dawson spoke about Joe Calzaghe, about wanting to possibly move down in weight in search of bigger fights against Mikkel Kessler, Carl Froch, Lucian Bute, and Arthur Abraham or to stay at light heavyweight and fight Bernard Hopkins and Adrian Diaconu.
The problem with all of those options is that it seems unlikely that Dawson will be fighting any of them because many of them are looking at better – as in easier – options in their own division and aren’t likely interested in taking a big risk and fighting a fast and powerful fighter like Dawson.
However, it seems hardly fair to Johnson who fought Dawson so closely and fought him well enough to leave the stink of controversy behind that still lingers to this day with many boxing fans. I can understand Dawson wanting to try and get bigger fights for more money, but it seems that Johnson is a fight that HBO wants and what many fans want as well.
In the absence of fights against Hopkins, Froch, Diaconu, Calzaghe, Abraham, Kessler and Bute, which is likely, then Dawson really needs to reconsider his thoughts about not wanting to give Johnson a rematch. After all, this is a fight that fans want to see and there are not a lot of other options available for Dawson at this time.
A fight against Dawson’s number #1 contender Tavoris Cloud might be an interesting bout, but there’s no rush for that fight because Cloud isn’t going anywhere and he doesn’t have a lot of high caliber opponents on his resume like Johnson does.
Dawson and his management group are turned off by Johnson’s numerous losses on his record, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that Johnson has been winning as of late and has looked superb in every bout since his fight with Dawson last year.