By Matt Stein: At yesterday’s press conference between World Boxing Council (WBC) light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (25-1, 16 KO’s) and Chad Dawson (29-0, 17 KO’s), an agitated looking Pascal had this to say to the undefeated Dawson: “If he thinks he can come to my town and run like a chicken and leave with my belt he is damn wrong. Stop talking s—t and let’s fight on Saturday night.” Dawson said “You and your team can trash talk all you want buddy, but I do my talking in the ring. There ain’t no chicken in me brother. You want to wish that on Saturday night, you’re going to have a long night.” Later on, the two fighters stood face to face where Dawson towered over the shorter 5’11” Pascal. This Saturday’s fight will be held at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.

In theory, that should give Pascal an advantage since he’ll be the home fighter and will have the crowd cheering his every punch. However, Pascal has never fought anyone nearly as good as Dawson and this fight presents itself as a huge step up for Pascal. Although he may be able to fight above his ability and hang with Dawson for a little while, but this is a tremendous step up for Pascal compared to the fighters that he’s been taking on in his career.

Pascal was beaten by Carl Froch in 2008. Dawson would likely make easy work of Froch and out-box him by a wide margin. This is why many boxing fans feel that Pascal’s only real chance of beating Dawson is to try and knock him out. That won’t be easy because Dawson moves around a lot, doesn’t fight flat-footed like many of Pascal’s previous opponents and Pascal isn’t a huge puncher due to his tendency to slap with his punches. Pascal is a good fighter, but he’s not really shown that he can hang with a fighter like Dawson in his previous fights. In looking at Pascal’s recent fights, he looks like a good B level fighter who decided to try his luck in the light heavyweight division, which is one of the weakest in all of boxing. The problem is that Dawson is the best fighter in the division by far and Pascal still is a pretty much just a B level fighter who is stepping up in class in a big way. Can Pascal win the fight? Maybe, but only if the judges give him a win that few boxing fans agree with.