My thoughts on last nights fight.

First off: Hats off to pascal and his team which came in with an unexpected gameplan (IMO) that ultimately beat chad dawson.

From the first round on I saw something that made me think wow. That was the fact that dawson was the stalker and pascal was the mover. I really thought this would be the other way around and was surprised that dawsons people didn't ajust a little bit to beat the style and strategy that pascal was using.

Pascal's strategy IMO was to jump in with shots(flurries) while dawson moved after him from time to time conserving most of his energy. This basically plays off of fans cheering at every time pascal swings which not only makes it hard for judges but also got into dawson's head. When pascal did jump in with his flurry he rarely landed the first shot he threw(minus a few straght rights), but was able to knock dawson off balance to land the second, third, forth or how many he had to throw to land one. Also Like I always say "Getting knocked off balance even if you block a shot is never a good look to the judges". This basically took chad off his game as he is the hunted and not the hunter in just about all of his fights. When you chase then you surrender your feet to a fighter moving laterally. The pascal strategy turned an all around boxer like dawson into a 1-2 stalker like tarver, trinadad, or pavlik (though a faster less powerful version).

The strategy is simular to the hopkins strategy for beating 1-2 stalkers and pascal put his own twist on it with explosive flurries.

2nd: Dawson showed his heart out there. I always knew he had more heart than people gave him credit for. He knew where he was at and went out and tried to end it and almost got the KO because pascal was so tired. Bad thing for dawson was that he was just about as tired as pascal.

As for the head butts: I think dawson was very cautious of him running in with his head during the flurries. That pretty much happens all the time when fighters match up and fight in this way. Dawson becoming the 1-2 stalker and pascal moving around and darting in, pushing dawson off balance with his body and punches, always makes for head butts when the stalker holds his ground. I think dawson didn't receive many or any significant headbutts to prior to the last one that stopped the fight.

As for the fight stoppage, I thought it was garbage and I can't remember any fight being stopped right at the time of the head butt/cutt. I thought it should have been dawson's choice to continue but I guess he was content with the stoppage with the brutal fight he had just been in.


Great fight and can't wait for the rematch. AND yes I have dawson in the rematch.

 

I was drunk last night but I just don't remember him saying anything that would indicate he was pissed about the stoppage. Maybe the fight wasn't brutal but these two guys were tired as hell.