By Eric Thomas: This Saturday night will be the showdown between WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (31-2, 17 KO’s) and the knockout artist Adonis Stevenson (20-1, 17 KO’s) on June 8th at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada.
Unless this fight ends in a draw, there’s going to be questions answered about the future of one of these guys starting with Dawson. He’s not looked good in quite some time and it could be that he reached his peak early and started going downhill at an early age.
Dawson was stopped in his last fight by Andre Ward last September in a 10th round TKO loss where Dawson quit after getting dropped.
In fights before that, Dawson beat Bernard Hopkins by a 12 round majority decision last year in April, and then fought him to a 2nd round no contest in October of 2011.
The opponent that most resembles Adonis Stevenson for Dawson is Jean Pascal, who Dawson lost an 11th round technical decision to in August 2010. Dawson struggled with Pascal’s explosive power and speed and he never really got comfortable until the 11th round when he briefly hurt him.
Before Dawson could finish him off, Pascal collided heads with him, opening up a huge cut over the right eye of Dawson causing the fight to be immediately stopped by the ringside doctor.
Stevenson might be a little more dangerous than Pascal, but he’s also more vulnerable to getting hurt himself if Dawson opens up with anything big.
When you see Stevenson fight you get the sense that he can be knocked out at any time if he gets hit with a hard enough shot. He doesn’t look good when he’s getting hit in return. Stevenson was stopped in the 2nd round by journeyman Darnell Boone three years ago in April 2010.
After all this time, Stevenson finally avenged the defeat by stopping Boone in the 6th round in March of this year, but even in that fight, Stevenson looked vulnerable when getting hit. Had Boone had size and boxing ability like Dawson, I think he would have had a good chance of beating Stevenson again.
If Dawson is careful and boxes Stevenson for 12 rounds, it’s going to be awfully hard for Stevenson to win this fight because he doesn’t have the size to compete with Dawson in a jabbing contest and he’s not going to outbox him. Stevenson has to out-slug Dawson, it’s as simple as that.