A battle of 37 year old blasts from the past, taking place over 8 rounds in the main event of a small card in Connecticut a week from this Friday. The vacant WBC USNBC light heavyweight title will be on the line. Dawson's last important victory was over Bernard Hopkins in their rematch for the WBC light heavyweight world title in 2012. After that he suffered back-to-back knockout losses to Andre Ward in a misjudged drop to super middleweight and then Adonis Stevenson to lose his belt up at 175. He is 4-2 since then, having fought half a dozen times in as many years, and returned to action this past June after over two years of ambiguous semi-retirement. Grachev peaked, briefly, around the same time Dawson was fading away from relevance, with his participation in the poorly received "Monte Carlo Super Four" tournament. Grachev entered like a gale force wind coming off a string of lower-level kayos leading to an upset of Ismayl Sillakh. In the actual tourney, he proved lacking, needing a gift decision to get past Zsolt Erdei and then getting blitzed in a round by Edwin Rodríguez. Dawson is an inch taller and has 7½" reach advantage over the Russian, and will be fighting in his adopted home state, based in CT since his pro debut almost two decades ago.
Dawson. As you said Grachev peaked a long time ago. Dawson while BADLY faded still has enough skill to largely outbox someone game like Fonfara until being taken out late. I'm not sure the Grachev who shocked and awed Sillakh would win this, even that version would be banking on a big punch a little too much. Dawson comfortable UD.
Crazy thinking about how this would have been a hyped up premium cable main event in 2013, but now is a non-televised joke.
I'm not sure if Dawson always had weird speech, but I saw him in a video with Badou Jack wishing well to Adonis Stevenson after his brain injury. Dawson sounded really bad and punch drunk. Hope he retires.
Dawson vs. Grachev at anytime is pretty much a joke in actuality. But yeah. This probably would have been spun as a legitimate fight at the time.
Sad to see how far Dawson has fallen. Zsolt Erdei. There's a name I haven't seen mentioned in a while. He was the king of.... carefully selected opposition.
Erdei was pretty good but I think content with being meh. Like serving up left over goulash the next night.
Man, how devalued is the WBC USNBC light heavyweight title for it to be a part of this circus? This is a belt, for reference, that boasts fights like Sullivan Barrera vs. Vyasheslav Shabranskyy and Marcus Browne vs. Radivoje Kalajdzic as part of its lineage. :
