by David P. Greisman
As Antonio Tarver and Steve Cunningham jawed back-and-forth at each other during a particularly heated media conference call, Tarver’s own tirade had him touting his credentials while deriding Cunningham’s ability to beat him.
“Ain’t nobody going to out-box me, period. The only way he going to beat me is knock me out, and that’s it,” Tarver said on July 23. “I ain’t gotta cut no weight. I’m feeling strong. I don’t have the problems I had at light heavyweight, so I’m at my best and I’m bringing it, period.”
Tarver is a former light heavyweight champion whose time atop that division ended with a 2006 decision loss to Bernard Hopkins, and he left 175 for good after a pair of defeats against Chad Dawson in 2008 and 2009. He moved up briefly to heavyweight in 2010 before dropping down to cruiserweight, where he stopped Danny Green in 2011 and then fought Lateef Kayode to a draw in 2012.
Except the Kayode fight was overturned into a “no contest” when Tarver tested positive for a banned steroid. He was suspended for a year and didn’t return until late 2013, this time as a heavyweight. He scored a technical knockout of Mike Sheppard, then spent another year out of the ring before knocking out Johnathon Banks last December. That moved his record to 31-6 with 22 KOs.
This will be Tarver’s first fight of 2015. He’s now 46 years old, but he still feels he’s got what it takes to defeat Cunningham.
“I got the best defense in the f**ing game. How you going to hit me? Come on, man. How you going to hit me? With what? With what?” Tarver said. “Sh*t, I see that sh*t coming a mile away. Come on, man. The bottom line is I’m going to have to close my eyes for this mother***er to hit me, because he ain’t going to be able to hit me with that basic bullsh*t. You ain’t fighting no average fighter. You fighting an exceptional fighter, dude.
“You ain’t faced nobody like me,” he said to Cunningham. “I don’t care nothing about all them Europeans you fought, straight-up-style fighters. I’m ‘The Magic Man,’ I got 1,000 tricks up my sleeve. It ain’t going to take but one to get your ass out of there, period.”
Cunningham is 39 and a former cruiserweight titleholder who’s been fighting as an undersized heavyweight since 2012, when he moved up and outpointed Jason Gavern. He’s gone 4-3 in the division. After Gavern came a controversial loss to Tomasz Adamek in, then a knockout loss to Tyson Fury, victories by decision over Manuel Quezada and Amir Mansour, a stoppage win over Natu Visinia, and a debated defeat to Vyacheslav Glazkov in his most recent appearance this past March. Cunningham is 28-7 with 13 KOs.
Tarver-Cunningham is the main event of an Aug. 14 “Premier Boxing Champions” broadcast on Spike TV.
Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com