Ward vs Dawson: John Scully Not Excited About Prospect of Going Down in Weight

With promoters working on getting a fight between super middleweight champ Andre Ward and light heavyweight champ Chad Dawson done for September 8, Dawson's trainer John Scully says he's not exactly thrilled about the idea of his fighter going down to 168 pounds for the bout, which Dawson has said he can and will do.

From David P. Greisman at BoxingScene.com:

"Ideally, you want to stay at 175. I kind of feel like Chad just became a much bigger star. Any guy in history goes up in weight; they go up to face the guy who’s the champion in the higher weight class. I would personally, on a business level and a physical level and all things considered, I just don’t like the fact that we’d have to go down to fight him."

Scully, who returned to Dawson's team last year before the first fight with Bernard Hopkins, says that he'd prefer seeing Chad face the winner of the August 11 fight between Tavoris Cloud and Jean Pascal, particularly Pascal, who is the only man to defeat Dawson as a pro to date.

That might be too long to wait, though. Getting the Cloud-Pascal fight done with would leave Dawson waiting until at least, say, December to get back in the ring again. An eight-month break isn't the longest thing in the world, but you also have to consider belt politics (Dawson holds the WBC belt, the Cloud-Pascal winner holds the IBF), and whether or not you can quickly negotiate with Don King (Cloud) or Yvon Michel (Pascal) to make that fight a fast reality, and get a network date in December/January, which isn't easy since boxing usually cuts off two weeks before Christmas, as no one likes training over the holidays.

I would share Scully's concern, though. Dawson going down to '68 seems a little much to me. Why not make Ward come up? Is Andre Ward beating off big fights with a stick right now? No, not really. Make him come up, or at least meet in the middle at 171 or something. That would be my opening stance, anyway, not just giving up the advantage and saying, "I want Andre Ward, and at 168! I'll do it!" Comes off kind of oddly desperate for a guy who just scored arguably his most notable (if not truly best) career win.

Now certainly isn't the time for Dawson to be chasing anyone, but if this is the fight everyone really wants, then I guess you do what you do to make it happen. He's not hunting an easy fight, that's for sure.