By Chris Williams: I got a big laugh today when I saw Steve Bunce trying to make excuses for Joe Calzaghe on Bunce’s Boxing Hour show, saying “what right does Chad Dawson (27-0, 17 KOs) have to share the ring with Joe Calzaghe in front of 80,000 people in Millennium stadium when he’s [Dawson] fighting Antonio Tarver, who knocked out Roy Jones Jr., in front of 2000 people when you can buy a ticket for 30 quid.”
Bunce is referring to the fact that International Boxing Federation champion Chad Dawson’s bout this Saturday night with former IBF light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver (27-5, 19 KOs) at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The bout apparently isn’t a popular one, although that has nothing much to do with Dawson, but rather because boxing fans aren’t interested in seeing another one-sided beating like last time out. Dawson and Tarver met previously in October 2008, and Dawson completely dominated Tarver for 12 rounds and easily took away his IBF title.
However, because of a rematch clause in the contract, Dawson was forced to give Tarver a rematch. Essentially, this is just a payday for Tarver, because I can’t imagine that he feels that he has any chance of beating Dawson this time around given that the last fight was so lopsided.
Tarver never had a chance in the fight and lost almost every round of the fight. In the 12th, Dawson dropped Tarver with a right hand and finished the fight strong. The boxing fans clearly aren’t interested in watching another slaughter.
Right now, Tarver, 40, is probably a little too old to be in the ring with a talented fighter like 26-year-old Dawson, and the little bit of hand speed and fire power that Tarver had in the past, seems to have abandoned him in the last couple of years. To beat a fighter in the class of Dawson, Tarver would need a lot more than he showed in his last fight with Dawson.
Dawson is still not a big star in the United States, which is another reason why the boxing even isn’t selling well. Up until now, Dawson has beaten quality fighters like Tomasz Adamek, Eric Harding, Glen Johnson and Tarver. That’s a decent resume for a 26-year-old fighter with eight years of pro experience under his belt.
However, it’s not nearly enough to make Dawson a big star in the U.S. because over here, there’s much more competition than in England, where the talent pool obviously is much smaller. In England, my guess is that Dawson would already be a tremendous star by now, even with the minuscule resume that he has under his belt.
If you look at stars like Calzaghe, he was hugely popular for a long period of time, despite fighting next to nobody. At the same point in his Calzaghe’s career when he was 26-0, Calzaghe had defeated a faded Chris Eubank to win the World Boxing Organization super middleweight title and had defended it three times against the likes of Branko Sobot, Juan Carlos Gimenez Ferreyra and Robin Reid.
Except for Eubank, Calzaghe’s resume had little quality at this point in his career, yet Calzaghe was already very popular. The U.S. has many more fighters that compete for the large American audience and it takes a lot to break through the ceiling to reach popularity.
Unfortunately for Dawson, the light heavyweight division has rarely been a popular one in the United States in comparison to the welterweight, middleweight and heavyweight divisions. That could change in the future, but historically the light heavyweight division has had few stars.
Roy Jones Jr. was one of the exceptions, although by the time that Jones moved up to light heavyweight all of his huge bouts were well behind him in the past. Jones did little at light heavyweight compared to what he accomplished at middleweight.
So for Dawson to gain the same kind of popularity that Calzaghe attained over in the UK, it will take a lot of maneuvering for that to happen. The way for Dawson to accomplish this is to move in and out of the light heavyweight division, fighting the best super middleweights like Mikkel Kessler, Lucian Bute, and Carl Froch.
That’s easier said than done, because it’s doubtful that any of them would want to fight a dangerous boxer/puncher like Dawson. By the same token, Dawson could be helped if light heavyweight Bernard Hopkins would give him a fight. It looks as if he won’t, so there goes another option.
Other than that, Dawson can try to lure one of the middleweights into giving him a fight, someone like Kelly Pavlik, Felix Sturm or Arthur Abraham. I can’t see that happening either. The German based middleweights, Sturm and Abraham, seemed contend to protect their unbeaten records fighting stiffs in Germany, and Pavlik probably isn’t interested in fighting another light heavyweight after losing badly to Hopkins last year in a one-sided 12-round decision.
Dawson can always go after light heavyweight champions Zsolt Erdei, Adrian Diaconu or Hugo Garay. However, none of those fighters have the name value to do much to help Dawson’s career. Even if Dawson beat those fighters, the boxing public wouldn’t likely care one bit, because the casual fan has no idea who most of them are.
Besides, I can’t see Erdei or Garay fighting Dawson unless they absolutely had to. The cruiserweight division has no big named fighters in the division, so it’s not worth it for Dawson to go after any of them.
At the end of the day, without help from a lot of different fighters in the middleweight and super middleweight divisions, it’s likely that Dawson will never be as popular as Calzaghe. That’s too bad, because I personally see Dawson as a much better fighter than Calzaghe due to Dawson’s combination of size, speed and power.
He’s a more complete package, but given the lack of competition in the light heavyweight division and the lack of interest in the weight division by fans, it’s hard to see Dawson ever being as popular as Calzaghe. If Dawson were to relocate to England, I think the British fans would be all over him and would anoint him as one of their biggest stars.
However, over here in the U.S, Dawson probably can’t attain that kind of popularity even if he were to stay undefeated his entire career and retire with a 46-0 record like Calzaghe.
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