By Patrick McHugh: The July 29th fight between WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson vs. Thomas Williams Jr. took a bit hit earlier today with the news that the co-feature bout between unbeaten #1 WBC Eleider Alvarez and Chad Dawson won’t be taking place.
The 34-year-old former world champion Dawson suffered a shoulder injury during training camp and had to pull out of the fight with the unbeaten Alvarez. The promoter for the card, Yvon Michel, is looking for a replacement to step in and face Alvarez, who will remain in the co-feature spot.
It’s pretty important that that the 32-year-old Alvarez remains in the co-feature spot because he’s going to be facing the 38-year-old Stevenson soon or Williams Jr. if he beats Stevenson.
It was a risky thing in matching Alvarez against Dawson in the first place due to Dawson’s advanced age. If they wanted to build the credibility of Alvarez, then they should have thrown him in with Artur Beterbiev in a sink or swim fight. If Alvarez can’t beat Beterbiev, then there’s no point in him fighting Stevenson, because it’s not as if he’s going to last long against him. Alvarez will need to be able to prove that he can beat the likes of Beterbiev, because he would have to face him sooner or later anyway.
Alvarez looked poor in his last fight against Isaac Chilemba in winning a questionable 12 round majority decision last November. That was a fight that easily could have gone to Chilemba. If not a win for Chilemba, then it easily could have been a draw. Alvarez did not shine in that fight and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that he doesn’t appear to have enough talent to be a world champion.
Instead of aiming Alvarez towards Stevenson, his promoter should be targeting WBA World champion Jurgen Braehmer because he’s the most beatable of the champions. IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev would likely make easy work of Alvarez due to him being so easy to hit. Chilemba was able to go the full 12 round distance with Kovalev, but that was only because he fought defensively the entire fight. Alvarez is a more aggressive fighter that tends to get hit a lot. Kovalev would very likely smash him easily.
It’s probable that Alvarez will get put in with someone even weaker than Dawson at this point, because there’s only 10 days to go before the fight card. They’re not going to be able to find a good opponent willing to take a fight against Alvarez on short notice, but I’m not sure if that was even the idea in the first place. With Alvarez initially being matched against Dawson, it seems they wanted him in a showcase fight rather than a competitive match-up.