By Jim Dower: International Boxing Federation light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson reportedly wants a fight with Joe Calzaghe next, according to The Sun Dawson, 26, defeated former IBF light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver on Saturday night by a 12-round unanimous decision in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight, although a little more competitive than the first bout in October 2008, was still mostly a one-sided mismatch with Dawson fairly easily beating the older, slower 40-year-old Tarver.
Dawson would now like to get a big money fight against a top level fighter, and thinks that he may need to move down to the super middleweight division to find the big fights. “Hopefully, Joe [Calzaghe] will be watching and think, ‘Maybe I didn’t retire as the best light heavyweight,’ and that will bring him [Calzaghe] out of retirement to face me.”
Yes, that would be super if Calzaghe was watching the fight and did agree to fight Dawson, because Chad could use a fight like this to increase his popularity with boxing fans. It took Calzaghe a long period of time before he become a popular fighter, finally achieving it in the last two years of his career with wins over Jeff Lacy, Mikkel Kessler, Roy Jones Jr. and Bernard Hopkins.
However, the 26-year-old Dawson would like to make a name for himself much quicker than that, but Dawson will need help from fighters like Calzaghe or Hopkins for him to accomplish this. Calzaghe says that he’s comfortable with his retirement and doesn’t plan on returning to boxing for any additional fights. However, a bout against a fighter as talented as Dawson could only help Calzaghe’s career if he were able to come back and defeat the unbeaten Dawson.
Calzaghe has taken a fair amount of criticism in his career, especially recently since his retirement, due to Calzaghe’s lack of talented fighters on his resume. For the most part, Calzaghe had fought mostly unknown competition until the last two years of his career when Calzaghe finally stepped out of the shadows and fought Lacy, Kessler, Jones and Hopkins.
It would seem highly unlikely that Calzaghe would want to make a comeback to fight someone like Dawson, because there would be a good chance that Calzaghe might lose the fight due to ring rust, and the combination of youth, speed, power and size of the younger Dawson.
Calzaghe fought most of his boxing career at super middleweight, only moving up late to beat Jones and Hopkins. In both fights, Calzaghe was dropped in the 1st round. Dawson, however, is even bigger and stronger than Hopkins and Jones, and might have too much size and power for Calzaghe to beat with his usual slapping style of fighting.
One thing is for sure, Calzaghe couldn’t stand directly in front of a fighter like Dawson without being drilled by some hard combinations and dropped. Calzaghe pressured both Jones and Hopkins, who by the time that Calzaghe fought them they were both in or near their 40s, and stood directly in front of them on the attack.
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