By Eric Thomas: WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (31-1, 17 KO’s) is without a doubt the best fighter in the light heavyweight division right now at this time, but still may not be enough for him to beat the best fighter in the super middleweight division in WBA/WBC champion Andre Ward (25-0, 13 KO’s) on September 8th at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.

Ward is arguably more dominant in his weight class than Dawson is fighting in his at 175. While Dawson has had some some close calls against Bernard Hopkins and Glen Johnson in recent years, Ward has been soundly beating everyone he’s faced. You can say that his recent win over Carl Froch was his toughest fight, but that was still a pretty dominant performance from Ward despite fighting with a broken left hand for the entire fight. Besides his two close calls against Hopkins and Johnson, Dawson also has a loss to Jean Pascal from 2010.

It’s hard to imagine seeing Ward lose to Pascal. As good as Pascal is, I can’t see him beating Ward. It would be like Pascal facing a better version of Hopkins, and I can’t see Pascal doing well against Ward unless he were able to knock him out somehow.

Dawson has to do a few things if he wants to beat Ward on September 8th: First of all, Dawson has to throw a lot more punches than he’s been throwing. I know he’s probably never going to be a type of fighter that is really busy in the ring, he needs to up his work rate significantly if he wants to beat Ward because he’s not going to get the job done throwing only 30 to 40 punches per round.

It’s going to take at least 70 to 80 punches thrown per round for Dawson to win this fight, and I’m not sure if he’s wired to do that. Dawson also needs to keep Ward from crowding him and forcing him to fight on the inside. Can Dawson do this? Possibly. He moves well around the ring but he’ll have to really move a great deal if he wants to keep Ward from getting inside on him and smothering him.