"I didn't monitor the food at all in previous camps," Scully said. "I didn't realize he beat Hopkins on a diet I wouldn't have chosen. People are really focused on this weight thing. It's a misguided direction of energy."
This isn't like the nasty pre-bout narratives with Hopkins. Ward, nicknamed "S.O.G." for Son of God, is a religious man, a family man. The closest that Ward came to needling Dawson on Tuesday was saying that he made the mistake of saying right off on HBO that he'd fight Ward at 168.
"That's Negotiating 101," Ward said. "He negotiated against himself. I never demanded a weight."
It was later reported that Dawson preferred 170.
"I said 168, catch-weight or 175," Dawson said. "They said 168. I told [promoter] Gary Shaw, make the fight, I'll go to 168 and Oakland. I gave him every advantage. I know what I'm capable of doing."
Ward, of course, turned that around and pointed out that Dawson, a lefty, is an inch taller, has a reach advantage of 5 1/2 inches.
"Speed, strength, power, let them tell it, they've got every advantage in the book," Ward said. "That's just not reality. I'm not spooked by the height and reach deficit."
"We have an advantage in them having all the advantages," said Ward's Zen master trainer, Virgil Hunter.
Hunter was especially pointed in his remarks about people who say this fight might be boring. The casual fight fans, of course, love knockouts and fireworks. There's nothing close to an Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward brutal epic on the horizon here. Neither fighter has had a knockout in three years, a combined 13 fights.
"There are always going to be fans that can't grasp what this sport is unless they see 100 head shots in five rounds, and bloody noses and busted eyes," Hunter said.
"I'm on a one-track mission to get my hand raised," Ward said. "The masters are the guys who can still walk and talk when their career is over. I've been trained to be a master."
Dawson says if he wins, he'll have the best of both worlds. Super-middleweight, he says, is more loaded. Or he might wait for some of those guys to join him at light-heavy. Ward said he sees himself moving up to light heavyweight "around the corner" and not dropping back.
There are some who see Ward as a younger version of Hopkins, prone to elbows in the clinch and head butts. Others champion Ward as a chameleon, able to fight in a variety of fashions. Either way, the weighty question is can these two men, talented, at the peak of their careers yet not flamboyant, raise the action, the science, raise themselves to beautiful heights?
"As a trainer the whole thing is about winning, above the crowd, above the legacy," Scully said. "But I do think Chad has the potential to open up more and be more exciting. I honestly feel Andre will bring that out of him."
"Two guys, best in their divisions, in their prime, fighting for something big," Dawson said. "This IS going to be big and exciting."
Even if Bad Chad Dawson is a little smaller than he was.
