Is Chad Dawson a hall-of-famer? He holds victories over Glenn Johnson, Antonio Tarver, and Bernard Hopkins. He also defeated Tomasz Adamek who was 31-0 at the time. Chad held the Light Heavyweight Title on 3 separate occasions. Thoughts?
If not, why not? Win x 2 over glen johnson, would participate in super 6 later Win over Hopkins who would go on to win another title 2x wins over Tarver took adameks 0 multiple champ. going down to face ward seems to have ruined him
Quality fighter and skilled boxer who beat a lot of good guys albeit unlike others he gets a free pass for his senior citizen bashing. But at his best he was really good boxer who possessed lovely skills and I always liked him both as a person and a fighter. I don't hold the loss against Dre against him because he was a walking cadaver at 168 and was man enough to head down to a weight he hadn't made in over six years and fight Mr No Concessions on a deck that was stacked against him, something Dre would never have done in a million years. He was so weakened by trying to get down to 168 he got knocked out in sparring by Edison Miranda (or at the very least dropped heavily and badly hurt) and he'd been getting bashed up all throughout camp by 12-1 novice Lionell Thompson.
I done a thread recently on p4p fighters who declined rapidly, kovalev being the subject matter. what do both kov and Dawson have in common before the true slide..... controversial defeats to ward
He's a better fit for the hall than some inductees, but I said no based on the standard that I think the hall should have. I'm not saying you have to be an ATG to get in, but for me Dawson doesn't cut the mustard. That said that win over Adamek was really sweet, especially given how much more Adamek ended up accomplishing. Then the pairs of wins over Tarver and Johnson looked like the start of something really special. I had hoped he would have sought revenge against Pascal instead of that career suicide against Ward. But even if he never fought Ward it would have been a matter of time before he got iced by either Kovalev or Stevenson
I personally don't believe so. But then again, is Ward a Hall of Famer? I'm not a fan, but I would say yes.
His team really let him down with he way they handled that. I've gone in depth in other threads about it...the short version is that there was a conflict of interest as James Prince ultimately controlled both fighters, and it's clear the decision was made to ride with Andre over Chad- Andre was viewed as the better long term bet. This is why, immediately following his win over Hopkins, Dawson took literally every concession to make the Ward fight: -he dropped to 168; no catch-weight -he went to Oakland to make it happen -he took just $600k, while Andre got $1.37 million, for approximately a 30/70% split. The figure wasn't close to a career high for Chad despite it being his biggest career fight. Ask yourself why a LHW champ coming off a good ratings fight vs Hopkins would accept such terms...he's either a fool, or didn't have any actual choice in the matter. My two cents?It was a horrible deal, he was betrayed by his team, and it's not like he had the power to not take the fight or demand better terms without it severely compromising his career. His "reward" for going along with it was an immediate title defense against Adonis. The dirty side of boxing business wrecked his motivation. Ward, and particularly Stevenson, sped up the downfall.
Man, I appreciate ward as an exceptional talent but how many times did he genuinely fight as the ‘away’ fighter