Dawson vs. Diaconu on Hopkins-Pascal undercard on 5/21

By Boxing News - 03/10/2011 - Comments

By Eric Thomas: Former two-time light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (29-1, 17 KO’s) will be facing 32-year-old Romanian slugger Adrian Diaconu (27-2, 15 KO’s) on the undercard of the light heavyweight clash between champion Jean Pascal and 46-year-old challenger Bernard Hopkins on May 21st. Dan Rafael is reporting that Dawson and Diaconu’s promoters have made a deal for the fight.

The bout will be shown on HBO, and Dawson-Diaconu will be on first. If Dawson wins, he’ll face the Hopkins-Pascal winner. Diaconu doesn’t have the same guarantee if he wins. It’ll be up to the winner of the fight if they want to take on Diaconu. It’s not likely that Pascal will waste his time fighting Diaconu considering he’s already fought and beaten him twice. The boxing public likely won’t be able to stomach watching Pascal fight and beat Diaconu yet again. Hopkins wants to move on and take on IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, so he’s not going to want to fight Diaconu either.

This is neither here nor there, because the 6’1″ Dawson will likely dominate the 5’9″ Diaconu without too many problems. Dawson was supposed to be fighting a rematch with Pascal now because he had a rematch clause in his contract with Pascal from their fight last August. Pascal was allowed to have one fight in between the rematch, and that was satisfied by his fight with Hopkins. The WBC messed things up by ruling that Pascal must give Hopkins an immediate rematch because their fight ended in a controversial 12 round draw.

Hopkins was dropped twice in the fight but dominated most of the other rounds. In addition, HBO preferred to put on the Hopkins vs. Pascal rematch rather than showing Pascal vs. Dawson II. Neither fight were particularly interesting to watch, but the Pascal-Dawson fight was especially boring because Dawson failed to let his hands go until the 11th, when he had Pascal hurt and was having his way with him.

The two fighters collided heads during the 11th and Dawson was badly cut. The referee jumped in immediately and the ringside doctor stopped the fight rather than letting Dawson’s corner try to stop the blood flow between rounds. Had the referee not jumped in, Pascal might have been stopped in the round.

Dawson-Diaconu is a decent fight, but not really a good test for Dawson. Diaconu was just schooled by Pascal and there are a number of better fighters that could have been chosen for Dawson than this guy. This will be an easy fight for Dawson. At least he’ll get a shot against the winner of the Hopkins-Pascal fight. Either way, Dawson will do well because he wants revenge against Pascal, but he also wants to fight Hopkins. Bernard hasn’t been eager to fight Dawson for some reason.



Comments are closed.