By Jim Dower: The bout between Chad Dawson and WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal this Saturday night could be a fight that is ripe for another controversial decision. The bout will be taking place at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada, where Pascal will he the home fighter. As we’ve seen on a rare occasion in fights that have taken place in Canada, sometimes the visiting fighter ends up losing by a questionable decision.
Hopefully this doesn’t take place this Saturday night but you never know. Dawson has already said that he’s going to need to knock Pascal out to get the win, as he doesn’t think he can win a decision over there. I wish I could find a reason to disagree with Dawson, but I can’t. I think Dawson is going to lose this fight unless he knocks Pascal out. I can see Dawson dominating all 12 rounds of the fight and still ending up on the losing end. It’s not that Dawson can’t get a fair decision in Canada, but rather I feel that the judges are sometimes influenced by the loud crowd noise. Additionally, there’s often few of the fans of the visiting fighters over there and mostly what the judges hear are fans cheering for the home fighters. I think this ends up influencing the judges.
I doubt that Dawson will be able to knock Pascal out, since Dawson hasn’t recorded a knockout victory in three years. Dawson has the power to knock Pascal out, but he doesn’t sit down on his punches enough to make it happen. This is why I see Pascal beating Dawson by narrow decision, which will likely anger tons of fans.
I can see a scenario where Dawson will appear to win all 12 rounds easily, and yet he still ends up losing the fight. I hope it doesn’t end up like that, but that’s how I see it going down. Dawson will lose his undefeated record, and Pascal and Dawson will then end up fighting a rematch in a neutral venue in someplace like Las Vegas, Nevada.
At that point, Dawson will avenge his defeat by easily winning all 12 rounds and getting the win. That bad part about this is the loss to Pascal in the first fight will ruin Dawson’s chance to get a fight against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute. Dawson will have to forget about that fight for a long time to come and possibly forever.
This is why I think Dawson made a huge mistake in agreeing to fight Pascal in Canada. Dawson should have only agreed to fight Pascal if they could fight in a neutral venue and not in Pascal’s home country.
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