By Shawn Lin: In a mouth-watering match-up coming up on September 8th, WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (25-0, 13 KO’s) will be defending his title against Chad Dawson (31-1, 17 KO’s) in a still to be determined venue in the United States. The two fighters haven’t yet signed the contracts for the fight but it’s expected that they will.
The fight weight will reportedly be 168lbs, as Dawson, the WBC light heavyweight champion, has already volunteered to move down in weight for the fight to take place. Unlike a lot of fighters who would attempt to pressure for a catchweight to even things out, Dawson doesn’t want any part of a catchweight and is okay with fighting Ward at 168.
After chasing him 3 years, Dawson finally met up with and defeated WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins recently in a 12 round decision win. The fight arguably should have been a one-sided affair, but Dawson, like usual, had problems staying busy in each round. He just wasn’t interesting in throwing a lot of punches, and that’s what he needed to do in order to sail to a lopsided decision. Instead, Dawson threw just enough punches to win by a 12 round majority decision. In a way that was victory enough for the 47-year-old Hopkins, because it kept his career alive despite him losing.
Ward is coming off of a 12 round decision over Carl Froch in the Super Six finals last December. Ward was able to control the awkward Froch with a hard jab and a lot of inside pressure that Froch wasn’t prepared to deal with seemingly. Ward had a chance to fight IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute if he had wanted to, but instead he told Bute that he has to work for the right to fight him. This may work out well for Ward if Bute looks impressive in the Froch fight, because it’ll make a fight with the two of them that much bigger. However, Ward first has to get by the 6’3” Dawson on September 8th and that’s going to be easier said than done for him. Ward could lose this fight if Dawson stays busy and is able to use his long reach to control the shorter Ward.