By Patrick Kehoe (Photo © Tom Casino/Showtime)
“I’m on God’s plan... I’ve always been all about big things... This fight will cement my legacy.”
Antonio Tarver never defaults to conditional assessments, especially on the subject of Antonio Tarver. He’s almost always been most secure on the high alter of grand intentions. And certainly, his career has been one of distinction. The lanky Floridian’s light-heavyweight career has been a seminal marker within the most recent history of that division’s collective cannon. Indeed, for all of Tarver’s misadventures and over sights, the fights won, legacy fights endured and championships earned as if opportunities to be spurned, his best boxing has secured him a place in the lineage of the very best fighters to have waged a career at one hundred and seventy-five pounds as the allowed limit.
And yet, his standing among the very best feels more precarious than it should be, his legacy less defined than closer inspection would identify.
“Fighting Chad Dawson is just another big fight for me; all of my fights are big fights, major events... I’m not underestimating him... Once again I am in a position to prove my nay sayers wrong; I always prove them wrong!”
Critical judgement has become the itch of condemnation that “The Magic Man” cannot seem to scratch away, cannot make vanish. The destroyer of Roy Jones Jr. cannot seem to make an incontestable case for himself; Tarver the victim of editorial diffidence and relegation in being compared against Roy Jones’ prime boxing figuration. At least, that’s how Tarver feels and has felt for the bulk of his boxing career. Not even a decapitating stoppage of ‘pound for pound’ main man Roy Jones inside of two rounds, May 15, 2004, changed the essential classification of Tarver from titlist to champion of his era, successor to Jones’ mantle.
Tarver having beaten Roy Jones became more about the decline of the phenomena of Jones exposed than the achievement of Tarver having proven his long standing claim, that it was he, and not Jones, who was the authentic champion at light-heavyweight, thee man at 175 in this era in boxing. For all of Tarver’s personal charisma, flights of rhetorical frankness and proven entertainment ethic, Jones was the HBO and internet darling and he the Thomas Hearns to Roy Jones’ Ray Leonard.
And yet, one can make the argument that Antonio Tarver, 27-4 (19), has embodied and produced three of the requisite characteristics for greatness as a championship boxer. Firstly, the early promise of his technical range and prowess, as a much heralded amateur, was realized as a professional, from undefeated late to the scene novice to undeterred developing contender to championship status. When hard rock Eric Harding won their battle of the undefeated, top contenders in 2000, it was Tarver who reinvented himself to produce a championship winning regiment, culminating in a July 2002 rematch battering of Harding. The “Harding Affair” illustrated the pattern which proved Tarver to be a master of the all or nothing rematch.
A second characteristic of greatness could be viewed during the prime of his championship years, when he constructed that signature win over Jones, a fight that should have elevated him among his peerage, with regard to its historical impact and generational impact. And perhaps most significantly, he’s demonstrated an ability to adapt and reformulate competence leading to success in title fights spanning many years and successive eras of boxers. His crusade to best twenty-five year old, undefeated Chad Dawson, one month shy of turning forty, would be more than a confirmation of his enduring presence in big time boxing. Or it should be. To create title-like winning scenarios after absorbing defeats, even as ones prime boxing years abate, tends to indicate character commensurate with greatness.
Yet almost no one is talking about Tarver as nearing a final delivery of something truly unique, an attainment at the elite level in boxing that only greats have made a reality. Can it be that a Tarver win would be relegated as yet another title winning effort against a then to be downgraded boxer, who failed to measure up to his own potential? Just how did Tarver get on the wrong side of general regard and critical acceptance? Probably, for every win securing a title belt the critical eye of judgement has fixated upon those intervening defeats.
The man who extinguished the legend of Roy Jones looked bored and bothered, by the naked aggression of Glen Johnson, just five months later, in December of 2004. Where was the passion and determination to reign? For all of Tarver’s self-belief in his being nothing short of a quantum singularity, HBOs true dark matter of boxing brilliance, he could only grope and grind out a twelve round loss to the pedantic Johnson. Even in reversing this loss to “The Road Warrior” in June, 2005 and stuccoing Roy Jones’ ego in their rubber match, Tarver brought to his fight with Bernard Hopkins the kind of half-hearted, dead man walking non-effort that had boxing writers and fans alike calling for his retirement.
Tarver, with his mercurial nature, almost seismographic in his ascending and petering fortunes, performed CPR on his own career this past April, in sending Clinton Woods back to Britain minus two alphabet titles. Perhaps, Tarver only enjoys being the hunter, in some perverse way needing the ridicule and scorn of those disgusted with his wasted potential, to fire up the engine of his intention.
If Tarver doesn’t sense he’s being dishonoured, disrespected, there seems to be little internal engagement, nothing essential to prove at the pivotal moment. The call to armed danger as unavoidable, impending danger alone fuels his demons, his obsession for pursuit. Beyond the climax realized in dispatching Roy Jones to a simulated ring life as a celebrated mediocrity, Tarver has struggled to stay on message, to keep to the higher calling greatness demands.
And so Tarver rightly takes the strong, silent Dawson, as a threat to his legacy; for Dawson, 26-0 (17), must be a threat to more than a championship, a title trinket or future options on Showtime Championship Boxing broadcasts. Dawson is the guy trying to obliterate Tarver’s sense of a living, enduring past, the collective listing of Tarver’s major fights. For the aging Tarver, fear is indeed a factor and a fuel source. How high, to what final cost will that price for motivational urging be driven?
“I feel brand new... my weight cannot be better... I am ready now!” That’s what old fighters say. If they can see themselves as better than ever, the past might be made to resemble the highlight zone of their short term futures. Belief must always be mouthed as absolute knowing. And no one declares themselves as authentically real and reinvested as Antonio Tarver when all seems unlikely, improbable, with the tide of reason ebbing out beyond the limits of assuredness. Not even the hyperbolic Bernard Hopkins makes as much out of reinvention as “The Magic Man.”
Of course, Tarver only periodically does his best to prepare for his fights. His demand to be appreciated as a an all time great champion has never been paralleled by a Holyfield-like routine for absolute dedication to the rigorous regiments needed to keep body and mind centered on winning at all costs fight to fight, defence to defence, no excuses, no compromising self-indulgence. Playing the aggrieved talent, the overlooked star, hunting for yet another chance to shine as a great among ring legends, seems to be his more natural role, the level at which his periodic genius sustains his frantic cry.
“I’m going to dig deep from round one for this one... He’s got decent talent but decent has never beat me... We ain’t fightin’, this is boxin’... I’m as fast as I want to be... I’m going to put my hands on him! I ruin fighters!”
“There’s a disease running through the light-heavyweight division and it’s called P.T.S. – Post Tarver Syndrome.”
Do we still believe Antonio Tarver – for all of his demonstrated abilities balanced against his messy chronology?
Does he still believe in Antonio Tarver? Then again, has faith ever been enough in the boxing ring, ever been a real substitute for knowing?
Tarver does know, as well as anyone who’s been to the mountain top, sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down.
Thing is, Tarver seems to be fighting mad this time. Will his history be any lesson for us? Or are things out of his hands now? If Tarver’s still feeling superior, he will not have given much credence to Chad Dawson’s warning shot: “I’m locked and loaded.”
That’s what young fighters say. For them, history hasn’t taken on the burden of multiple meanings, quite yet.
Patrick Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net