Former light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson, whose slide from the top came fast and furious in back-to-back one-sided knockout losses, will return following a year layoff.

Dawson is scheduled to face George Blades on June 21 at the StubHub Center in Carson, Calif., on the undercard of welterweight Robert Guerrero's first fight in 13 months (since a decision loss to champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.) against Yoshihiro Kamegai, according to Golden Boy Promotions.

Golden Boy does not promote Dawson but added him on the card as part of a deal with Al Haymon, his adviser, who has several of his clients on the show.

Golden Boy vice president and matchmaker Eric Gomez said Dawson-Blades, a scheduled 10-round fight, will be televised as part of the Showtime Extreme coverage of the preliminary bouts.

Gomez said another bout on the Showtime Extreme portion of the card will feature 2012 U.S. Olympic super heavyweight Dominic Breazeale (10-0, 9 KOs) against 2004 U.S. Olympic heavyweight Devin Vargas (18-3, 7 KOs).

Showtime will televise the top three bouts on the card: Guerrero-Kamegai along with the vacant featherweight title bout between Vasyl Lomachenko and Gary Russell Jr. and former welterweight titlist Devon Alexander against Jesus Soto-Karass.

Dawson (31-3, 17 KOs), a southpaw from New Haven, Connecticut, was considered one of the best fighters in the world pound for pound and coming off an April 2012 decision win against Bernard Hopkins in a light heavyweight world title fight when he moved down in weight to challenge super middleweight champion Andre Ward in Ward's hometown of Oakland, California in September 2012.

Drained from making weight and having been knocked around in sparring in the weeks leading up to the fight by faded contender Edison Miranda, Dawson had nothing against Ward, who knocked him down three times and stopped him in the 10th round. However, because the fight with Ward was at super middleweight, Dawson, who turns 32 in July, remained the light heavyweight champion.

Then he faced Adonis Stevenson last June 8 and lost the title by one-punch knockout in the first round -- a knockout selected by several media outlets as the knockout of the year.

Dawson has not fought since, although in March he signed with Haymon. Dawson owns two wins apiece against Antonio Tarver and Glenn Johnson and has also defeated Hopkins, Adrian Diaconu and Tomasz Adamek.

Blades (23-5, 16 KOs), 39, of Indianapolis, is 2-3 in his last five bouts, including an 11th-round knockout loss to Zsolt Erdei in a 2007 light heavyweight title bout in Germany.

Blades is coming off a fifth-round knockout loss in September to former light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal, who handed Dawson his first defeat, an 11th-round technical decision in a 2010 world title fight.

Also on the card, welterweight Fabian Maidana of Argentina, the younger brother of former welterweight and junior welterweight titlist Marcos Maidana, will make his professional debut in a four-round fight against an opponent to be determined.

In addition, Ugandan lightweight contender Sharif Bogere (24-1, 16 KOs) of Las Vegas will face Mexico's Hector Velasquez (56-21-3, 38 KOs) in a scheduled eight-rounder.

The fight will be Bogere's second since losing a decision to Richar Abril in a March 2013 world title bout. Bogere was sidelined for 13 months after the loss due to an Achilles tendon injury.