By Dan Ambrose: This is how a fighter loses his ability. He makes some money off of one or a series of fights, and then he sits idle and does nothing for an extended period of time while waiting on a huge fight that may or may not ever happen. Former WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (26-2, 16 KO’s) could be one of those fighters that loses his skills if he stays out of the ring too much longer, as he’s not fought since losing to Bernard Hopkins 10 months ago last year in May 2011.

Pascal looked awful in that performance and is now sitting and waiting for a rematch against Chad Dawson or possibly a third fight against Hopkins if he gets by Dawson in his rematch with him next month on April 28th. However, Pascal has lost basically a year of his career where he’s not stayed active and not made any money. But worse than that is what the time away from the ring may do to his skills. He’s not a huge fighter at 5’10 1/2″ and he can’t just sit out of the ring for ages and then come back and win on size alone. Pascal’s main asset is his hand speed and sitting idle and doing nothing is the worst thing you can do for a fighter like that.

There was talk recently of Pascal facing former light heavyweight champion Zsolt Erdei recently but that fight fell through. Now the 29-year-old Pascal is just sitting and waiting on the Hopkins-Dawson fight to take place so that he can try and get one of them to fight. He may succeed in landing the winner of that fight, but I think his chances of beating either of them are now quite low with his time off. By the time Pascal does get a fight with one of them, he will likely have been out of the ring for almost a year and a half. That’s not smart. He’s given away that time and has nothing to show for it.