By Jim Dower: Legendary trainer Emanuel Steward has signed on to begin training former two-time light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (29-1, 17 KO’s) to try and fix the many holes in his game and to try and get Dawson to the next level. Dawson, 28, lost his last fight against WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal in August. Dawson fought a poor fight, not throwing nearly enough punches until the 11th round when he finally opened up with a flurry of shots that had Pascal covering up and looking uncomfortable with Dawson’s sudden explosion of shots.

Fortunately for Pascal, his head collided with the right eye of Dawson and it opened up a huge gusher of a cut over Dawson’s eye. The referee then stopped the fight and Pascal won by a 11th round technical decision. But it was a fight that Dawson could have won had he thrown punches. He didn’t even really jab all that punch, and it looked like he was unsure of himself and worried about gassing out or getting hurt.

Steward, who trains notable fighters IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko and WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, saw the fight while working the Dawson-Pascal broadcast for HBO. Steward pointed out many things that he felt needed changing for Dawson. It was pretty obvious what Dawson needed to have changed with his poor work rate. He just wasn’t throwing punches. It’s unclear whether Steward will be able to make a lot of progress in this area because this problem has dated back two years to his fight with Glen Johnson. Dawson used to thrown a lot of punches several years ago, but his work rate dropped off in 2008, starting with his fight against Johnson. Dawson continued to be plagued by a poor work rate in his two fights with Antonio Tarver and his rematch with Johnson.

There’s a possible rematch with Pascal that could be coming up for Dawson’s next fight. However, that depends on HBO if they want to pay the same amount for the fight as last time. If not, Dawson and Steward will move on and look to fight someone else. Steward says “Chad Dawson will regain his light heavyweight title and perhaps add titles in the super middleweight and cruiserweight divisions. He is that talented.”