By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF/WBO light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (29-0, 17 KO’s) realizes that he’s probably going to have to go in looking to knock World Boxing Council light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (25-1, 16 KO’s) out when they meet on August 14th at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dawson, 28, will be fighting in Pascal’s home arena in Montreal, where it’s typically very tough for visiting fighters to win fights by decision. If the fight is seen as close, it’s likely going to be Pascal that gets the decision rather than the visiting Dawson.

Dawson is correct. He probably stands little chance of winning a decision in Montreal unless he does some dramatic, like knocking Pascal down three or four times and spaces the knockdowns out in separate rounds. He has to really dominate Pascal to ensure that he can get the judges to score the fight for him. Pascal, 5’11”, is giving up almost a foot in reach to Dawson and two inches in height. The reach is going to be pretty significant because Dawson has a great jabs and really fast hands. Pascal has been able to beat his couple of opponents Adrian Diaconu and Silvio Branco with his hand speed alone.

Now, however, Pascal will be fighting someone a lot bigger and even faster than him, who fights out of the southpaw stance and has better power. Pascal was defeated by Carl Froch in December 2008 in a 12 round decision loss. Well, Dawson appears to be a lot better than Froch, so what does that tell you about Pascal’s chances against him?

Pascal really has only once chance in this fight, and that’s if he can spoil, try to smother Dawson’s offense and hope that the fight will make it to the cards so that he can possibly win a controversial decision. In a head to head match-up, Pascal just doesn’t have the skills needed to beat a fighter like Dawson. This is like matching a good super middleweight against an excellent bigger light heavyweight. It’s going to be clear early on that Pascal is out of his element against Dawson, as he starts to take a lot of punishment from the American.