Chad Dawson's two fights with Antonio Tarver both did awful attendance numbers in Las Vegas. It'll be hard for him to land a big fight, which he desires. (via Yahoo! Sports)

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26-year old light heavyweight titlist Chad Dawson may have HBO behind him, but as of right now he is far from being a viable star, and a fight with superstar veterans like Bernard Hopkins or the retired Joe Calzaghe is simply not going to happen.

Robert Morales reports that even though the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas reported about 2,100 in attendance for the Dawson-Tarver rematch last week, the actual number sold was 1,426.

Add that to the pitiful 991 tickets sold for their first fight in Vegas (at The Palms) last October, and you have a combined 2,417 tickets sold for two fights. Let's just say this wasn't the biggest rivalry in the sport.

To be totally fair, Dawson-Tarver could have outdone the two-fight number with one fight at Foxwoods in Connecticut, where Dawson is from, or likely even one fight in Tarver's native Florida. Since Dawson wouldn't go to Florida and Tarver wouldn't go to Connecticut, everyone lost money.

Dawson won't be landing a fight with Hopkins, and he doesn't have anywhere near the juice to bring Calzaghe out of retirement. That leaves precious few options, especially given that HBO Sports apparently wish to make him a star.  He may well have to fight Glen Johnson in the rematch that both he and promoter Gary Shaw seem deathly afraid to take, or he might have to make a fight with someone like Roy Jones Jr., who failed to sell much at Madison Square Garden against Calzaghe last November. Dawson-Jones would be destined for Vegas, too, most likely, and it'd be another probable gate flop.

Dawson simply is not a star, at least not yet. There's no getting around it.

On another note, the same Morales article says that cruiserweight champ Tomasz Adamek turned down a $1.2 million offer to fight Hopkins. Consider me skeptical.