By Jim Dower: Former IBF/WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (30-1, 18 KO’s) won an easy if not impressive 12 round unanimous decision over Romanian Adrian Diaconu (27-3, 15 KO’s) on the undercard of the Bernard Hopkins vs. Jean Pascal bout at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.

The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 118-110, and 116-112. Dawson, fighting for the first time with new trainer Emanuel Steward, revealed a new upright fighting style in which Dawson jabbed frequently and threw fewer combinations than he did in the past.

Dawson looked almost robotic in winning the fight and fought a lot like IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, also a fighter that fights under Steward’s guidance. However, you can’t argue with success. Dawson made a mess of Diaconu’s face with his hard jabs and rarely was hit by other than when Dawson would come forward looking to throw body shots and combinations.

Dawson fought well when he was following Steward’s instructions to box Diaconu. It was when Dawson strayed from these plans is where he had problems and would get hit. It was a fairly boring fight to watch due to Dawson’s lack of passion and because of the one-sided nature of the fight. Dawson looked lazy at times and disinterested for some reason. Perhaps it will take a better fighter than Diaconu to wake Dawson up and get some emotion out of him.

The 5’9″ Diaconu tried to make a fight of it but he was too short to reach the 6’3″ Dawson with any regularity. In addition, Dawson’s hard jabs kept the shorter Diaconu at the end of his punches making it easy to control him. The only time Diaconu had any success was when Dawson would allow him by getting near Diaconu to throw.