By Marcus Richardson: WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (31-1, 17 KO’s) revealed that he’s only 10 pounds away from making weight for his September 8th bout against WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward (25-0, 13 KO’s) next month at the Oracle Arena, Oakland, California.
In an interview with ESPN2 Friday Night Fights last Friday, the 29-year-old Dawson said “I’m at 178 now. I can make weight easy and I’m at my right weight.”
There were a lot of concerns from boxing fans and writers about Dawson draining himself by having to come all the way down from his weight division, 175 pounds, to face Ward at 168. There are more than a few fans/writers that are under the impression that Dawson will end up drained from taking off the weight. However, with him only 10 pounds away from the weight for the fight with Ward, people are going to have to rethink the notion that Dawson will be hurt by taking weight off.
If he’s this close with still a month to go before the fight then it suggests that Dawson could have been fighting at super middleweight all these years if he wanted to. I didn’t make a lot of sense until recently because the division was a dead one for well over a decade until guys like Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Andre Dirrell, Adonis Stevenson, Arthur Abraham, Thomas Oosthuizen, Edwin Rodriguez, Anthony Dirrell and Kelly Pavlik brought some life to it. Now it’s one of the best divisions in boxing. Before Joe Calzaghe retired, Dawson had been hoping to get a fight against him but he’d never had any luck in landing the fight.
Dawson, 29, says he’s not going to get trapped in Ward’s game of fighting on the inside. He’s not going to allow Ward to make him fight that guy of fight. Dawson plans on boxing and using his reach to control the fight from the outside rather than standing close to Ward and exchanging shots on the inside.