Chad Dawson battles Shujaa El Amin on Tuesday

By Boxing News - 12/08/2015 - Comments

dawson6756By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF/WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (32-4, 18 KOs) will be back in action on Tuesday after a 14-month layoff in a scheduled 10 round fight on Fox Sports 1 on Premier Boxing Champions against little known journeyman Shujaa El Amin (12-8, 6 KOs) from the Sun National Bank Center, in Trenton, New Jersey.

Dawson’s career has really gone downhill in the last three years with three defeats in his last four fights since 2012. The biggest blow for Dawson was him losing to a very mediocre fighter in Tommy Karpency last year in October.

Karpency is a gate keeper type fighter at best, and someone you don’t lose to if you’re any good. Dawson suffered a hand injury early in the fight and was forced to fight with one hand in the second half of the contest. But that still doesn’t excuse the fact that he was staggered a couple of times by Karpency in the fight.

Karpency isn’t noted for having good punching power, so it was kind of a shock to see Dawson getting buzzed by him. There’s some boxing fans who believe that Dawson’s punch resistance is no longer there for him at the age of 33.

Besides the loss to Karpency, Dawson has also suffered a 1st round knockout defeat to Adonis Stevenson in 2013 and a 10th round TKO loss to Andre Ward in 2012.

It’s hard to see what Dawson can do at 175 at this point in his career. He’s a southpaw, and would likely give a lot of the fighters in the division, but there are too many big punchers that would likely beat him. You would have to worry about Dawson’s safety if he were to fight the likes of Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev, Artur Beterbiev, Sullivan Barrera, Eleider Alvarez, Juergen Braehmer, Andrezj Fonfara, Edwin Rodriguez, Jean Pascal and Yunieski Gonzalez.

There are just too many fighters in the division that would likely KO Dawson if given the chance to fight him. That’s why it’s hard to imagine what can be done with him. He probably can’t make the 168lb division at his age, and he’s too light boned to fight at cruiserweight. Dawson pretty much has to stay at 175, and there’s just nothing for him right now.

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It’s possible that Dawson can be brought slowly back against increasingly better opposition over time, but I don’t think he’s going to be able to recapture the form that he had during his best years in the sport from 2007 to 2012. Dawson had five good years at the top of the light heavyweight division that he can be proud of. Not too many fighters can last five years at the top the way that Dawson did. Even Kovalev hasn’t been at the top of the 175lb division for five years yet.

In matching Dawson against the 28-year-old El Amin, he’s being put in a great position to get an easy win. However, I don’t know what the victory will do for him. If Dawson can’t beat the above mentioned fighters, then there won’t be any place for him in this weight class other than being an opponent for the top guys to chew up and spit out.

El Amin has lost 8 out of his last 10 fights, and is in no way the same class as Dawson, even this version of Dawson.

As bad as Dawson looked against Karpency last year, it wouldn’t be surprising if El Amin gets him in trouble too if he can land something solid. If Dawson loses this fight, then he needs to think seriously about retiring from the sport.

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It’s not a great card by any means. In other fights on the card, unbeaten cruiserweight Keith Tapia (16-0, 11 KOs) faces journeyman Garrett Wilson (16-9-1, 9 KOs) in a 10 round fight. Tapia is a decent fighter, but clearly not on the same level as the real talented fighters in the cruiserweight division.

Tapia, 25, does have youth on his side, so maybe he can stick around long enough for the really good cruiserweights to get old and move on. But against young and talented cruiserweights like Olesandr Usyk, I can’t see him ever beating a guy like that.

Unbeaten super bantamweight Juan Dominguez (19-0, 13 KOs) will be facing Yenifel Vicente (27-3-2, 19 KOs) in a 10 round mismatch. The 29-year-old Dominguez is a decent fighter, but not someone in the class of Guillermo Rigondeaux, Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg. He’s a nice 2nd tier fighter in other words.



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