By Scott Gilfoid: WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward (25-0, 13 KO’s) will be giving away a lot of size on September 8th against the 6’3″ Chad Dawson (31-1, 17 KO’s) in their battle at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. Perhaps for the first time in his career, Ward won’t be the better fighter while on the outside.

Ward usually is able to pick and chose whether to dominate an opponent on the outside or the inside, because of his multifaceted game. But in this fight he’s facing an even better talent from the outside in Dawson, and that’s going to limit the things that Ward can do in this fight. Ward was able to make adjustments in his fight against Sakio Bika in November 2010.

In that fight Ward discovered in the first half of the fight that Bika was the better inside fighter, and it was too dangerous to try and fight him in close. Although it took Ward six rounds to make an adjustment, he eventually did and fought Bika from the outside in the last six rounds to win the fight. But Ward won’t be able to do that against Dawson, because Dawson is the better athlete on the outside and he’ll make Ward miserable if he tries to fight him from that vantage point.

Instead, Ward has to take the fight to Dawson and get in close and stay there to keep Dawson from being able to use his long reach to his benefit. In his last fight, Ward was able to easily control Carl Froch on the inside and keep him from using his long arms to land shots.

Froch fought better when the action was on the outside because he was able to extend on his shots with power. But Ward got in close was able to smother Froch’s offense completely for most of the second half of the fight to preserve the win. Ward has to do this with Dawson, because he’s so much more skilled than Froch. He can’t let Dawson jab him to pieces from the outside or throw his combinations because Ward can’t compete with that.