By Eric Thomas: Former WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson’s career is at a pretty low point right now after his 1st round TKO loss to Adonis Stevenson this month, and there are many boxing fans questioning whether the 31-year-old Dawson still has anything left for him to make another run at a world title at 175.
I think Dawson needs to find another trainer, preferably his old trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. so that he can get Dawson to start focusing on defense first and not slugging with his opponents.
Dawson’s chin clearly isn’t good enough for him to be mixing it up with opponents at this point in his career. We saw Andre Ward knock Dawson out in the 10th round last year in September after putting him on the canvas three times, and we saw Stevenson knock him out as well.
Physically, Dawson still appears to have the same talent that he had when he was dominating the light heavyweight division. The thing that is different is he’s getting hurt when he gets hit and getting stopped.
The way around that is for Dawson to take some time off from boxing and to get with Mayweather Sr. so that he can teach Dawson to keep from getting hit at all. If there’s anyone that’s good at this it’s Mayweather Sr. and he could definitely make some major improvements in Dawson’s defense.
You have to think of Dawson as another Wladimir Klitschko type of fighter, who still has a lot of talent, but who needs to stay out of the way of his opponent’s punches in order for him to win his fights.
Wladimir learned how to keep from getting hit with big shots from his late trainer Emanuel Steward, and I think the same thing can be done with Dawson as well with the right kind of training.
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