AMERICA AT LARGE:CHAD DAWSON is 26 years of age, unbeaten in 28 professional fights, and in almost any impartial reckoning would be considered the light-heavyweight champion of the world, today's legitimate heir to the likes of Roy Jones Jr and Billy Conn, of Jose Torres and Archie Moore, writes GEORGE KIMBALL
But Dawson is unique among today’s crop of champions in that he holds the title of none of the four major sanctioning bodies, nor is he recognised by The Ring magazine, which has anointed itself the sport’s fifth king-maker.
He has, in fact, never lost a title in the ring, but thanks to the interference of television networks, he has now lost two of them outside it. The most troubling aspect of this development is that there are some who would claim it has actually been good for boxing.
If I seem to be taking this a bit personally, perhaps I am: I’ve known Chad Dawson since he was a raw New England teenager, and had predicted greatness for him back then. I was at the Silver Spurs Arena in Florida when he beat Poland’s Tomasz Adamek to win the World Boxing Council (WBC) title, a belt he defended three times before relinquishing it under pressure from Showtime last year.
According to WBC regulations, Dawson was obliged to make a mandatory defence against Adrian Diaconu, a Montreal-based Romanian who had somehow achieved the number one ranking. Showtime, which had the option of televising Dawson’s next fight, had zero interest in showing the plodding Diaconu, but liked the idea of a bout between Dawson and Antonio Tarver, who had regained the International Boxing Federation (IBF) championship by beating Clinton Woods.
No one held a gun to his head, but in its most elemental terms Dawson was given a choice of resigning his championship to fight for Tarver’s, or keeping it and facing Diaconu in a short-money bout that might not be televised at all. He chose the former option.
Dawson solidly outpointed the elderly Tarver last October, and then, after switching allegiances by signing a multi-fight contract with HBO, beat him again in their rematch in Las Vegas last month.
At this point the IBF rang in to remind Dawson he now faced a mandatory defence against its number one challenger, somebody named Tavoris Cloud. HBO had other ideas. They wanted to televise Dawson in a rematch against another ageing former champion, 40-year-old Jamaican-born Glencoffe Johnson.
HBO vice-president Kery Davis insists his network “would never ask a fighter to give up his title”, but HBO does not appear to have given Dawson much choice. A few weeks ago they told him he could either resign his WBC championship and make around €600,000 for fighting Johnson, or, if he preferred, he could go ahead and fight Cloud, an exercise for which he might get €80,000 if he was lucky.
So a bit over a week ago promoter Gary Shaw flew to the IBF convention in Panama City and officially delivered Dawson’s letter of resignation. And in Bad Chad’s case, he doesn’t even have The Ring’s belt to fall back on, because the magazine, for reasons which have yet to be explained, lists its 175lb championship as “vacant”, and declined the opportunity to recognise the winner of the Dawson-Tarver rematch as the legitimate claimant. If The Ring belts weren’t intended to address situations like this one, what are they supposed to be for?
The sanctioning bodies themselves must shoulder a share of the blame here for elevating Diaconu and Cloud to a status neither deserved.
When Dawson initially balked at fighting him, Diaconu beat American Chris Henry to win the WBC’s “interim” title, which was elevated to the Full Monty when Dawson resigned to fight Tarver. Seven years ago we saw Diaconu labour to defeat Shaun Creegan, a very ordinary Massachusetts boxer, in an eight-rounder in Boston, and two months ago we saw him go another eight tedious rounds in a non-title bout against Canadian journeyman David Whittom in Montreal. He’s as useless now as he was then.
Tavoris Cloud’s claim is equally dubious. He is from Tallahassee, Florida, and is 19-0 with 18 knockouts, but he has never faced a legitimate contender, and never faced an opponent from among the top-25 light-heavyweights.
The networks’ lack of enthusiasm is understandable, but during Roy Jones’ long run atop the division, HBO televised fights of RJ against a host of inept mandatory challengers without once suggesting Jones give up any of his multiple titles.
Or maybe they just don’t like light-heavyweights. In 2004 – after both Tarver and Johnson had knocked out the fading Jones – they loomed the division’s top attractions. Tarver held the WBC and WBA title, Glencoffe the IBF’s. At that point HBO rang in with a proposal for a multi-million dollar pay-per-view bout in Los Angeles on the condition that they both resign their titles. It was an offer neither man refused.
There have been similar episodes involving non-light heavyweights in recent years. Joe Calzaghe, having added Jeff Lacy’s IBF title to the WBO version he had held for a decade, relinquished the IBF belt prior to his 2007 unification bout against WBC/WBA champ Mikkel Kessler, leaving Lucien Bute and Sakio Bika (whom Calzaghe had just beaten) to fight it out for the IBF title.
And prior to his fight against Ricky Hatton last November, Paulie Malignaggi gave up his IBF light-welterweight title rather than comply with an order to fight a rematch with Herman Ngoudjo, whom he had just beaten. The result was that while Juan Urango wound up with the IBF title when he bested Ngoudjo in Montreal this year, Hatton emerged from his one-sided win over Malignaggi recognized as champion by only The Ring. As a consequence, only the magazine’s belt was on offer when Manny Pacquiao crushed Hatton in Las Vegas last month.
And 16 years ago Riddick Bowe famously tossed the WBC heavyweight title belt into a dustbin rather than face their top-rated but presumably “unworthy” contender – a guy named Lennox Lewis.
