Chad Dawson vs. Jean Pascal II on March 23rd

By Boxing News - 11/17/2012 - Comments

Image: Chad Dawson vs. Jean Pascal II on March 23rdBy Dan Ambrose: WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (31-2, 17 KO’s) will be facing former WBC champion Jean Pascal (26-2-1, 16 KO’s) in a rematch on March 23rd in a still to be determined venue, according to Boxrec.com. Dawson was beaten by Pascal by a 11th round technical decision in August 2010, but was unable to get a rematch against him despite having had a rematch clause in his contract at the time.

Dawson has won two out of his last four fight but is coming off of a bad 10th round knockout loss to Andre Ward last September in a fight that took place for Ward’s WBA and WBC super middleweight titles in Oakland, California. Dawson looked weak and slow from having drained down from 175 to make 168. In hindsight it wasn’t a good idea for him to take the fight at that weight without at least a catchweight being involved.

Pascal is in even worse shape having been out of the ring since May of last year when he was beaten by 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins. Pascal does have a fight scheduled next month on December 14th against Aleksy Kuziemski at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. If everything goes alright with that fight then Pascal will be facing Dawson in March in fight that will probably end up in Canada somewhere. Dawson isn’t a huge draw in the United States. Pascal has a huge fan base in Canada, and it only makes sense for it to take place there if the two fighters want to bring in a large gate.

Dawson had a lot of problems with Pascal’s speed in their fight in 2010. Dawson looked uncomfortable with the explosive combinations from Pascal and never really got into the fight until the 11th round when he briefly hurt Pascal after unloading a flurry on him. However, the fight was stopped in the same round after Pascal accidentally collided heads with Dawson causing a large cut over Dawson’s left eye. The fight was then stopped it went to the cards.

In looking at how much trouble Dawson had with the speed from Ward in his last fight I think it could be a bad decision on Dawson’s part to take the Pascal rematch. He’ll get a good payday but it might not be worth it unless he figures out how to deal with Pascal’s speed and explosive combinations. Hopkins had no problems nullifying what Pascal was doing, but Hopkins is also a lot more experienced against those types of fighters compared to Dawson.



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