The Continuing Erosion of The Light Heavyweight Division

[dans]

P.S. - 6 out of Johnson's last 8 fights were held in Florida, his adopted home state. Road Warrior? Maybe for the majority of his career, but not now.

Last week someone was trying to tell me that if a Dawson-Johnson rematch happened, it should be in Miami. HAHAHA

Why not just hold the rematch in Jamaica?

Everyone feels bad for Glen Johnson, not me. You don't lose 8 fights in your prime if you're a great fighter. You don't get robbed 12 times in a career, as some would lead you to believe.

I like Glen and think he's a very good fighter, but please stop with the sympathy. He's a former undisputed LHW champion and has made some decent coin along the way.

[dans]

Yeah but the flipside to what you say about the German boxing fans is they appreciate a good technical boxing match and sportsmanship, whereas Americans like trash talking trashy acting fighters, and would rather see a skilless brawl.

German's also like crooked judging.

[hookoutofhell]

Yeah but the flipside to what you say about the German boxing fans is they appreciate a good technical boxing match and sportsmanship, whereas Americans like trash talking trashy acting fighters, and would rather see a skilless brawl.

lol agreed although as dans has pointed out sometimes you do get the odd crooked decision.

i think this article is talking more about the continued demise of american boxing, boxing on a more global level is getting better. besides even with the dearth of talent in the LHW division i dont think boxing as a whole is 'dying', as one division declines another finds new stars.

look at the SMW's, now if bute, kess, froch and andrade were american or born in the US do you think articles like this one would be written?

american boxing as a whole seems to be on the decline instead of pointing the finger at euro fighters, and conveniently scapegoating americans, american boxing journalists should turn their attention to current problems in the US, e.g:

1) the poor conditioning and lack of fight and hunger shown by some of their fighters ala taylor, chambers, arreola, even dawsons conditioing problems are pretty well documented.

2) US fighters seem to have a superioritiy complex and seem to think that because they are from the US they have some god given right to take the bigger share in neogtiations, fighters like mayweather, hopkins, wright are well known to be extremly hard to neogtiate with so often we see the biggest fights not getting made. networks should put pressure on fighters like these to make the big fights.

[The Hammer]

There are some other very good up-and-coming light heavyweights like Beibut Shumenov and Nathan Cleverly. The division is not really bad at all, but it's been recycling the old guys like Tarver and Johnson too much, and we haven't seen enough of the good young fighters like Tavoris Cloud.

[The Hammer]

German's also like crooked judging.

There's been far more bad decisions in the US the past few years.

[Shadow boxer 3]

175 aint been the same since RJJ faded. maybe if Froch went up to LHW to fight Dawson that would be intresting. every division has its up and down years, these are the LHW down years. it will come bac up again

[LEFTYGUNZZ]

Yeah but the flipside to what you say about the German boxing fans is they appreciate a good technical boxing match and sportsmanship, whereas Americans like trash talking trashy acting fighters, and would rather see a skilless brawl.

Listen I appreciate the fact that a fighter can be smart and well skilled. Process his movement and use logic to execute a game pna. But come guy if I wanna see someone stand around and think about every move he makes I will watch a danm chess match...I want to see two highly skilled fighter try to knock eachother out not watch a jab hug fest by one fighter who is much bigger then the other....Lefty

[JakeNDaBox]

Peaks and valley's Jake, peaks and valleys. Look at the super featherweight division. That was a great division a few years ago and now it's miserable. It has nothing to do with your "grandfathers" division. It has to do with great fighters getting old. In a few years who knows?


I also dispute the fact that Dawson has been unable to even draw interest in fans from his homestate and the fact that Johnson is a road warrior, and never had the benefit of a home crowd.

1. Dawson has had one fight in Connecticut since he became a name. It was against Jesus Ruiz and he wasn't the headliner, Tarver was. How can you say Dawson can't get interest in his home state if it's never even been tried? Dawson-Tarver 2 should've taken place at one of the CT casinos. FACT
2. Dawson-Johnson was held in Florida, Johnson's adopted home. The fans in the building were most definitely pulling for Johnson, and it was the reason they booed after the decision was read.

Shaw did a show in Dawson's hometown (New Haven, CT) for what I believe was his first Shobox main event, when he fought Ian Gardner. Moments before the telecast began, a few of us in press row took the time to literally count the number of people in attendance. If they sold 200 tickets for the event, it was a lot.

His very next fight was against fellow Connecticut resident Eric Harding. Shaw was asked straight up by yours truly why the fight took place in a California casino rather than marketed as a home-state rivalry. He gave some hullabaloo about site fees and all that, but if it was all about casino money, why not just take it up the road to Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun? The majority of the developmental stage of his career took place in both casinos. No doubt they were familiar with him - or were they?

I'm a very big Chad Dawson fan. Have been for quite some time, and I probably can't name more than five fighters of whom I'm a bigger fan. But the fact is, he lacks three things in regards to becoming a star:

- The personality/charisma to reach beyond the sport's cult following
- The right opponent to propel his name
- A promoter willing to do the legwork to build up his name, instead always settling for network and casino money.

[vrodz]

How can boxing be dying? Since the year begun we have had a decent card on the premier networks almost every weekend. Boxing looks very alive to me. Now we can't say the same about this weight class, very boring fight out of two very boring fighters. I don't know how some people have Dawson on their P4P list????

[JakeNDaBox]

P.S. - 6 out of Johnson's last 8 fights were held in Florida, his adopted home state. Road Warrior? Maybe for the majority of his career, but not now.

Last week someone was trying to tell me that if a Dawson-Johnson rematch happened, it should be in Miami. HAHAHA

Why not just hold the rematch in Jamaica?

Everyone feels bad for Glen Johnson, not me. You don't lose 8 fights in your prime if you're a great fighter. You don't get robbed 12 times in a career, as some would lead you to believe.

I like Glen and think he's a very good fighter, but please stop with the sympathy. He's a former undisputed LHW champion and has made some decent coin along the way.

It's also worth noting that six of Johnson's last eight fights were complete tune-ups. And let's not pretend that he has any sort of fan base in Tampa (where the Dawson fight took place).

that said, my mentioning "(L)ong ago earned the repuation..." should sound an alarm that I'm not referring to his past few fights, but more so fighting Clinton Woods three times in England, fighting Sven Ottke in Germany, Silvio Branco in Italy...