Wayne McCullough reckons Jean Pascal was fortunate to beat Chad Dawson in their light heavyweight bout.
Accidental head butt changed course of the fight
Jean Pascal was making the third defence of his WBC belt. Born in Haiti but now calling Canada home, he took on former champion Chad Dawson who had held the belt prior to Pascal.
A 2004 Olympian, Pascal had only one loss on his record - to England's Carl Froch when he was fighting at super middleweight. This time, though, he had home advantage, with Dawson travelling to fight him in Quebec, Montreal at the city's Bell Centre, and the arena was filled with Pascal fans.
Dawson is a tall light heavyweight at 6' 1" and had the height and reach advantage but Pascal at 5' 11" had the better chin. In terms of punch power, they are fairly equal but Dawson's experience and quality of opponent had been better and in his last four fights, he had beaten Glen Johnson and Antonio Tarver twice each.
Dawson began the fight using his slick right jabs, trying to set up his straight lefts, but Pascal was elusive and moved away from most of the shots. When Pascal came in close, he threw a barrage of body shots and then got out of the way. For the first half of the 12-round fight, Pascal was in charge using his fast hands and footwork against the much slower Dawson.
Dawson did land some clean shots but he didn't throw any combinations, and the majority of the time he hit Pascal he let him get away. Each fighter hurt the other in some of the rounds but not enough for a knockdown.
However, in the 10th, when it was clear that Dawson may need a KO to win, he piled on the pressure and finally got his combinations off, landing four or five punches at a time.
Pascal was exhausted from about the eighth round and he was finding it hard to stay in the fight. In the 11th he was totally worn out and Dawson landed a big left to his head.
Pascal almost went down, which would have been a first for him, but he held on, and a few seconds later, an accidental head butt opened up a nasty cut over Dawson's right eye. One look from the ringside physician and the fight was stopped, sending it to the scorecards.
The British and American judges had it 106-103, while the Canadian adjudicator scored it wide at 108-101 - all in Pascal's favour. He deserved the win by a few points but the question remained. If the head butt had not happened, would he have been too tired to make it to the end of the fight? Maybe, as he was extremely weary and had been hurt badly in the previous round.
Pascal said he wanted to conquer America, so maybe a rematch of this fight could happen in the States.
