By Matt Stein: Light heavyweight Chad Dawson (29-0, 17 KO’s) will have been out of the ring for nine months by the time he fights WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (25-1, 16 KO’s) on August 14th at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada. Dawson, 27, last fought in November, 2009, defeating Glen Johnson by a 12 round unanimous decision. Dawson really wanted a popular fighter and decent money fight, and with the light heavyweight division almost entirely barren of big money stars, Dawson decided to fight Pascal.

The problem is Pascal badly dislocated his shoulder in his last fight against Adrian Diaconu in December 2009. Initially, it was thought that Pascal would be ready to fight Dawson much sooner. However, the date got pushed back to August and now Dawson finds himself having to wait nine months for a fight that is interesting but not so interesting that Dawson should lose almost a year of his career.

Surprisingly, Dawson went along with it and decided to wait all this time for the Pascal fight. I think Dawson would have been much better off cutting his losses and moving down to the super middleweight division which is stacked with high quality fighters and future stars. Dawson seems to be spinning his wheels in the light heavyweight division facing mainly faded stars of the past just to get money fights.

There just aren’t any younger fighters that boxing fans are really excited about in the division aside from Tavoris Cloud. But Cloud isn’t popular enough yet for a bout between him and Dawson to bring in much money. It would be a great fight in making Dawson and Cloud bigger stars but they would be fighting for a less money now than they could make in the future. Dawson would be so much better off if he told Pascal to forget it and then moved down in weight and challenged IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, who is probably a much better fighter than Pascal anyway.

Pascal was already beaten by Carl Froch last year by a 12 round decision. I don’t know why Dawson wants to waste 9 months of his career just to fight a guy that was already beaten soundly by Froch. That seems pointless. And Dawson is going to be taking big chances in fighting Pascal, a Canadian based fighter, in Montreal. I can see Dawson losing that fight by a home town decision.

I’ve seen quite a few fighters from Canada win fights that I saw them losing badly. And Bute’s win over Librado Andrade in their first fight in 2008, is probably the best example of how hard it can be for foreign fighters to win over there. I saw Bute as being knocked out in the 12th round by Andrade after it took ages for Bute to get back to his feet.

He finally made it back to his feet but only after the Canadian referee twice stopped counting to warn Andrade about staying in the neutral corner. Even if you ignored all the time that the referee spent on warning Andrade instead of counting, Bute still couldn’t stand up on his own two feet without needing to lean against the ropes when he finally did get up.

The referee had to have seen that Bute was leaning against the ropes. Anyway, I think Dawson is taking a big risk in going to Canada to fight Pascal and he’s also wasting his valuable career by waiting for nine months just to fight Pascal. Like I said, Dawson needs to move down in weight to the super middleweight division and forget about the light heavyweight division for now. Once most of the current top super middleweights move up to the light heavyweight division, then I think Dawson should move back up there but not until that time.