By Dan Ambrose: Chad Dawson (29-1, 17 KO’s) appears to have been slowing going downhill since his zenith several years ago with his win over Tomas Adamek. Since then, Dawson has had four fights against 40-years-olds Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson, and seems to have morphed into a poor man’s version of Floyd Mayweather Jr. Dawson openly admits to be a big fan of Mayweather and who wants to fight like him.

That’s all well and good, but Mayweather has faster hands than Dawson, and even though Mayweather can be boring to watch at times, he’s still a busier fighter than Dawson is in the ring. Mayweather throws more punches and is not just trying to avoid getting hit, which is what Dawson seems to be doing a lot lately.

Dawson cannot afford to continue to fight in the Mayweather style of he wants to be successful in the future. We saw last Saturday in Dawson’s 11 round technical decision loss to WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal that Dawson can easily be outworked. This wasn’t the only time that we’ve seen this problem from Dawson.

He was outworked by Glen Johnson in their first fight and also outworked by Antonio Tarver for stretches of time in their rematch last year in May 2009. Dawson would pile up a lead and then just sit on it and stop throwing shots, looking as if he was either tired or not into the fight.

In the future, Dawson’s opponents are going to look at the Pascal fight and see that Dawson can be dominated if you take the fight to him, and that’s likely what they’ll be trying to do. Dawson is still good enough to dominate most of the fighters in the top 10, but unless he can turn into a brawler jumps on his opponents and tries to bury them with a flurry of shots, I think Dawson is going to continue to fail in the future when facing good quality opposition.

Dawson really jumped on Pascal in the first 30 seconds of the 11th round, and looked as if he was on the verge of stopping Pascal. But for some reason, Dawson pulled off of the attack and just stood there watching Pascal, as if expecting him to keel over. Dawson did this all fight long. He would land some nice shots, but then back off and just let Pascal come back for his own shots.

It’s really surprising that Dawson’s trainer hasn’t noticed this problem with Dawson’s game and fixed it. This has been going on for some time, and yet Dawson keeps fighting the exact same way fight after fight, and has become utterly predictable to watch.

Dawson’s trainer really needs to sit down and figure out what Dawson is doing wrong and then needs to try and correct the problems before it’s too late. Dawson needs to stop pacing himself and start throwing shots nonstop. He fights like a 40-year-old the way he tries to pace himself all the time. At 28, Dawson should be able to throw at least 50-80 punches per round without gassing out.