A fight that has been brewing for months finally takes place in Las Vegas on Saturday when Chad Dawson meets Antonio Tarver in a clash of well-matched southpaw light-heavyweights.

Tarver defends his IBF and IBO titles while Dawson vacated the WBC championship so that he could advance unencumbered by mandatory-defence obligations into a much-discussed showdown that will be televised by Showtime (along with same-day coverage of the heavyweight title bout between Samuel Peter and Vitali Klitschko).

As usual, Tarver has been stating in no uncertain manner what he will do to his opponent. Dawson, he says, is stepping out of his league in this fight.

Tarver's verbal barrage seemed to intimidate his last opponent, Clinton Woods, who fought as if he was expecting to lose (and even seemed to confirm this impression afterwards with his embarrassing “just a skinny kid from Sheffield” comments).

Dawson will be a different proposition, though. The undefeated 26-year-old believes in himself and is coming to win — to shut Tarver’s mouth, as he puts it.

Each man has looked in tremendous condition in their Las Vegas workouts. Tarver, who turns 40 next month, is an old man in boxing terms but sees himself as the fresher fighter. He believes that Dawson’s gruelling win over Glen Johnson in April has put years on the younger man and left him damaged goods. Dawson, though, feels that the Johnson fight has made him stronger, physically and mentally. “A lot of people said my chin was suspect, but Johnson hit me with the shots that he knocked Roy Jones Jr. out with, and I didn’t go down,” Dawson said over the phone from Las Vegas.

Dawson was under heavy pressure against Johnson but fired back with some very impressive combinations. “No light-heavyweight could have stood up to those shots, but Johnson’s not a normal fighter” Dawson told me. He sounded a little in awe of Johnson’s incredible toughness and tenacity. “He took my game to another level,” Dawson said. “I learned something in that fight.”

His ring education will continue with the stern examination against Tarver, who lost and won in two hard-fought title fights against Johnson: there are many who believe that Tarver did enough to win both bouts.

Another opponent he and Dawson have in common is Eric Harding, who outpointed Tarver but was knocked out by him in the rematch; Dawson soundly outpointed Harding after suffering a flash knockdown in the opening round.

Dawson was also on the floor in his fight with Tomasz Adamek but otherwise dominated the tough Polish boxer. “You get hit with that shot, right on the button, you go down,” he said. “I was never seriously hurt.”

It did look as if Dawson had been hurt by Johnson — several times fact — but he rallied every time. “If you hurt me and I don’t go down, I’m going to come back and try to hurt you, too,” he said.

Tarver, of course, will be looking to hurt him at the first opportunity — and keep him hurt. It would suit the Magic Man if he could make Dawson disappear with one big left-hand shot from his southpaw stance, the way he blew out Jones and Harding.

Just because Tarver has gone the distance in six of his last seven fights doesn’t mean that he isn’t still a dangerous fighter. He had Roy Jones on the brink of being stopped in their rubber match. If Tarver can land a punch flush on the target he can hurt just about anyone at 175 pounds.

Tarver’s lamentable showing against Bernard Hopkins was one of the weirdest things I have seen in boxing in a long time. Tarver has said he believes he was poisoned. I doubt that, but something was wrong because Tarver was there in body only that night; his mind and spirit seemed to be somewhere else.

The win over Woods was something of a redemptive fight for Tarver, but even though he fought well he was never really challenged. Still, the fight showed if nothing else that Tarver still has a lot left.

One thing that will never leave him is his colourful pre-fight rhetoric. “I got a lot of Chad Dawson's on my resumé. He don't have not one Antonio Tarver, so I'm taking him into uncharted waters, places he's never been before,” Tarver said at the press conference that announced the fight. “He's going to get a crash course of what it really feels like to be in there with a legendary fighter. A great fighter. He ain't fought a great fighter yet until Oct. 11."

Dawson, meanwhile, says he will send Tarver into retirement, but a concern I have is that the younger man might let his emotions get the better of him and thus leave himself open to be caught by Tarver’s left hand. His trainer, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, himself a former fine light-heavyweight champion, will be aware of the dangers and I would think that the plan will be for Dawson to use his speed and his legs, hitting and moving out, changing his angles, left to right, so as not to give Tarver the chance to line him up for a big, fight-changing blow.

Tarver is smart and resilient and he has been in a lot of big fights. He cannot ever be counted out. I think he will be looking to put pressure on Dawson, trying to bully him and always, at every moment, seeking to pull the trigger on a left-hand shotgun blast. Yet Tarver hasn’t faced anyone like Dawson in a long time, someone this young, athletic and co-ordinated, nor with such blurring hand speed. Tarver can move his hands and get off with bursts of punches but I think that Dawson has the edge in punch-rapidity and crispness although the older man surely has the heavier one-hit wallop.

The fight with Johnson was, as Tarver says, a very tough one for Dawson and if there are any residual effects of that enervating struggle I am sure that they will be ruthlessly exploited by the savvy veteran. I believe Dawson, though, when he says that coming through the fires of that ordeal has helped to shape him into a better fighter. It will not be long before we find out.

Dawson was installed as an early favourite by the linemakers and the odds have hardly moved, showing that the players in general cannot quite get a solid feeling for the fight. I don’t have a solid feeling, either, but I do think that Dawson will win. I believe that he will be a bit too fast, too young, too zestful, for a Tarver whose best chance of winning is to land a haymaker.

Dawson by decision is, I think, the most likely result, but Bad Chad is an excellent body puncher, and if he can get into position to blast in shots downstairs in a consistent way — if Tarver goes to the ropes, for instance — there might be the chance of a wearing-down, late-rounds TKO victory. Whoever wins, though, I think that the crowd at the Palms casino hotel and Showtime viewers will see a fight that lives up to expectations.

Note: I previewed the Vitali Klitschko vs Samuel Peter fight for ESPN.com earlier in the week but I plan to take a sort of final-thoughts look at the fight on Friday.