Pascal shocks Dawson
There was a major shock in Montreal on Saturday night, as underdog Jean Pascal defeated the formerly unbeaten Chad Dawson with a controversial 11th round technical decision.
With Pascal’s WBC light-heavyweight belt on the line, the fight culminated in its penultimate round with an accidental clash of heads, which sent proceedings to the cards. The judges were unanimous in their decision and the points went the way of local boy Pascal with 108-101, 106-03, 106-03 in a fight that the Canadian surprisingly dominated.
In the press conferences and build up to the fight, there was clearly no love lost between the rivals, and Pascal clearly carried that into the ring as he started the bout in an aggressive manner. In contrast, for some reason “Bad Chad” seemed unwilling to exchange and stood on the sidelines as the Canadian unloaded punches on the southpaw.
Pascal clocked up the early rounds until Dawson started to pick up the pace and got his jab going, collecting one or two rounds in the process. The unbeaten American tried to work Pascal’s body but still stayed cautiously on the outside as Pascal stomped around throwing down punches in anger.
As the fight wore on, Pascal was in control by a number of rounds and decided to go for broke in the ninth, throwing the gauntlet down to Dawson with an absolutely ferocious combination. It looked like a blistering attack, but may have been deceptively all huff and no puff because Dawson was playing possum and surprised the champ by chasing him round the ring and unloading some powerful uppercuts, then a combination that included a one-two and some vicious straights that snapped Pascal’s head back. That was Dawson’s most telling assault, and Pascal appeared to be growing weary, swinging out his punches in a tired and ungainly fashion.
This should have been a good platform for Dawson in the tenth round, but he didn’t put his foot down, once again eased off and it was all Pascal. This was bizarre because the champ was in a bit of trouble, but Dawson backed off and lost the tenth.
Dawson’s corner must have smelt defeat and told him to go for the KO because the American came storming out the blocks, smashing Pascal from pillar to post in the 11th. Perhaps he was on a late KO strategy from the start because all of a sudden the champion looked weary and was taking a hammering.
The key moment occurred when Pascal was backed into the corner by Dawson and moved his head forward catching Bad Chad above the right eye. Dawson immediately signalled to the ref and as blood poured down his face like an explosion at a jam factory, the officials called it off and it went to the cards.
Of course this being boxing, controversy has to reign and the question is how deliberate was the “clash”? Pascal knew he had the fight in the bag if he could make it through to the end, but he was in a world of trouble with Dawson stinging them through with powerful left and right hooks and the champ was very much on the ropes both figuratively and physically. A cynic would say Pascal was looking for a way out, but really it looked quite accidental, he seemed to be trying to get his head out the way and was unaware he was going to clash with Dawson, but the debate will probably rage on for some time.
Ultimately it just shows how important the early rounds are in a fight. No matter how good Dawson is he shouldn’t have allowed Pascal so much time and space to run the show. In fact Dawson just didn’t seem interested at all whereas the champ seemed fired up and showed aggression throughout. Had the fight gone on for another round and a half, then he could have been in trouble, but he certainly did enough to win the fight while he could.
It was more a case of “Sad Chad” than Bad Chad, but the highly thought of American will go back and prepare for a rematch which will no doubt be a fiery encounter.
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