Saturday April 12th
I could smell a faint stench in the air watching Glen Johnson and Chad Dawson fight. Midway through the 5th round I turned on the fight expecting to see the typical undercard fight. Boy was I wrong. The first look at the fight had the appearance of a fight that should have been one sided. The obviously younger looking Dawson appeared to be in control. I myself not being an avid boxing fan have learned over the past few years to look at the body language of both fighters. Glen Johnson with his head down slowly moving forward one baby step at a time with the grace of a racing turtle was backing Dawson away from him. Showtime does a glorious job pulling great fights and introducing MMA with a great mix of fighters, however I was really surprised after 90 seconds of watching the fight when Dawson was boxing (scoring minimally), and Johnson was landing solid shots. Dawson using his technical skills along with two to three punch combinations was spoken highly of by the commentators. With the sixth around coming to a close both corners had the impression that the fight was well in hand. Let's fast forward to the later rounds. Glen Johnson had pushed Dawson away with straight and overhand right punches. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the champion it’s very difficult to win on points.
With that said, there was a recent bought in Mexico where the judges for the fight where inexperienced let alone biased. With history against him and fighting time the thirty-nine year old Johnson remained steady inching toward his goal. I've learned by watching very good fighters and their opponents to see that Dawson had his technique working yet failed to see that a majoring of his body punches landed on the back of Johnson's hip, and for every punch that landed there were four that did not. It's clear that being the champion has its privileges. If you're wondering what Johnson did? He moved forward, blocked Dawson more effective punches and got hit by a jab or two between Dawson trying to punch going backward. After watching many fights I've learned to look for the intimidating punch. It’s the punch that alters the opponent’s strategy. Dawson was very effective landing right hooks. Right hooks coming from a southpaw aren't very flashy yet effective. The one thing this gives Johnson is the advantage of his opponent turning his torso toward his strong hand. After that hook Dawson has no defense and forced to pull back after his attack. (This is where Johnson dominated Dawson) I quickly saw what I wanted to see. Johnson measured the time from punch to retraction. I saw Dawson get popped in the chin with a short an inch short from short circuiting the champion's nervous system. This proved to be too good to be true for a sports fan like myself. Let me remind you that this was round 5. This happened repeated until he finally hurt Dawson in round ten. The rounds between my insight and Johnson's execution were back an fourth with Dawson running and not scoring heavily or consistently. So what does an old fighter do? Win the last four round decisively, and paralyzing the assault of the champion and the previous three. After basically getting dominated and nearly knocked out the champ wins 116-112. This was a unanimous decision from a performance in which the champion was nearly knocked out twice, swollen in the face, and scoring by landing soft jabs to his opponents shoulder.
After the fight was over Glen Johnson gave a sincere plea for an investigation and rightfully so. Later that evening Antonio Tarver was asked how he felt about Chad Dawson would be a great opponent. He called out Dawson by saying, "Chad Dawson is a lame duck. He's not the same fighter he was the day before today. The only difference is that that wasn't Antonio Tarver hitting him tonight." Antonio Tarver is still a big name in boxing and in his late 30's. Glen Johnson is also in his late 3o's. If thisis the performance Dawson turns in one hopes he can actually win the fight decidedly and not through the favor of inexperienced judges.
