By Matt Stein: I think it’s fair to say that WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal’s best chance at beating the two time light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson is to try and turn the fight into an all out brawl early and hope that he can either hurt Dawson and possibly stop him or take him out of his game plan. Dawson is probably going to be focusing on outboxing Pascal all fight long.
If the fight comes down to a tactical fight, Dawson will easily win this fight. If Dawson can beat the likes of Tomasz Adamek, Glen Johnson and Antonio Tarver, then he’ll have an easy time taking care of Pascal. Jean has good boxing skills for the most part, but he’s not really in the same class as a bigger, faster and more skilled fighter like Dawson. Pascal is a good fighter, but he does better against guys that are slower than him and who just stand in one place and let him do all the moving.
I really don’t like Pascal’s chances in this fight, even if he does succeed in turning the fight into a slugfest. Dawson has the better power, the better hand speed and he punches with much better form with everything he throws. His jab his better and he seems to be a smarter fighter as well. Pascal is limited in a lot of different areas. In only loss of his career against Carl Froch in 2008, Pascal started off quick and landed a lot of good shots to the head of Froch.
However, when Froch turned up the heat in the second half of the fight, Pascal looked out of his league and he quickly fell apart and became mostly just a punching bag for the last six rounds of the fight. Dawson appears to be a level above Froch, and that would mean at least couple levels above Pascal. I don’t buy that argument made by some of Pascal’s loyal fans that he’s improved since the Froch fight. I think his opposition has been worse, and that’s allowed Pascal to look better than he is.
Prediction: Dawson by easy 12 round decision
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