Saturday night, he has his chance when he faces New Jersey native Joe Solecki at Prudential Center in Newark. It’s not always the ideal scenario, to be the bad guy facing the local hero, but Dawson’s never been worried about such matters. He’s concerned with his fight, his performance, and nothing else. And while he isn’t happy about having to relive his last outing, the bright side of it is that he didn’t take a three-round thrashing en route to his first defeat since 2016. It was quick, he got caught, and he left it in the past.
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“Losing’s losing, and people can be like, ‘Yeah, I’d rather lose an exciting fight than win a boring fight.’ Those guys can go f**k themselves. (Laughs) I’m trying to win. That’s it. So if I do lose, I’d rather lose in the first 30 seconds, take zero damage and be back in the gym the next day rather than, oh man, I lost a split decision, my elbow’s banged up, my neck hurts, my leg hurts, I’ve got to do six months of physical therapy. Losing is losing, and it sucks no matter what. And I’d rather lose to a guy that I know I’m better than, than fight a guy that I just had no chance to beat, because where do you go from there? Look, I got caught. It’s cool. No problem. He was better than me that night. But I don’t think Bobby Green is a better fighter than me. I just think he was better than me that night. But if I fought somebody that just absolutely destroyed me for 25 minutes and I could not do anything against them, what do you do after that? Where do you go? How do you fix that?”