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Tarver claims he was drugged but can't prove it
By Dan Rafael
When Antonio Tarver faced Bernard Hopkins last June, it was obvious from the outset that it wouldn't be his night. Hopkins bullied a lethargic Tarver all over the ring, knocked him down in the fifth round and took the light heavyweight championship on a virtual shutout decision.
The stakes were high. When you look at that fight ... everybody that knows me knew that something was terribly wrong from when I walked from the dressing room to the ring. Something was wrong all day. It is a possibility.
Antonio Tarver, on the possibility that he was drugged
Now, as Tarver (24-4, 18 KOs) prepares for his return to the ring a year later to face Elvir Muriqi (34-3, 21 KOs) on June 9 in Hartford, Conn., he says he believes he was drugged before the fight with Hopkins.
Although Tarver didn't accuse anyone specifically of drugging him, he made the accusation Thursday during a teleconference with reporters to discuss his fight with Muriqi (Showtime, 10 p.m. ET/PT).
"It is a great possibility," Tarver said, when asked about the possibility of being drugged before the fight in Atlantic City, N.J. "The stakes were high. When you look at that fight, which I have not seen in its entirety, everybody that knows me knew that something was terribly wrong from when I walked from the dressing room to the ring. Something was wrong all day. It is a possibility, but I cannot say that my preparation was any different than it has been.
"I have always been committed, dedicated and a hard worker. So when you look at those assets, then you have to say something else happened for me to fight so flat, so lifeless, so emotionless, so unspirited in one of the biggest fights of my career. Something definitely happened and something was terribly wrong."
Tarver said he has no proof that he was drugged, nor did anything out of the ordinary come from his post-fight urinalysis.
"I wish I would have had a blood test right after the fight," Tarver said. "Normally, they do drug-test you after the fight. I do not know if there is any possibility of going back and getting that urinalysis and examining it to see what happened. Mentally, I was beat out of the game -- could not get focused, could not get up for the fight -- and that is just not like me."
My sister thought that maybe I could have been poisoned. Maybe somebody tampered with some food. My reflexes were not there, my counter punching ability was not there. Something went terribly wrong.
Antonio Tarver, on the possibility that he was drugged
Tarver said he felt fine at the press conference the week of the bout and also at the weigh-in. The night of the fight, however, he said he didn't feel like himself.
"Fortunately, I did not receive any serious injuries that night, but I was a dead man walking," he said. "I do not know what happened and there are a lot of things that have come up lately that I am questioning. I just know at the press conference, the electricity was there. At the weigh-in, the electricity was there. The night of the fight, I was a dead man walking, just a shell of myself. I do not know what happened before the fight.
"Something happened. I do not want to point the finger. I believe that there was a possibility that they got to me, or someone got to me with ordering room service, a drink of water or whatever. But I was not myself. As big as that fight was, I could not get into it mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or nothing. I was zapped for whatever reason. I cannot blame it on my trainer because we trained properly. We were ready. But when I went to bed and woke up that day, I was a zombie and I do not know what happened. My sister thought that maybe I could have been poisoned. Maybe somebody tampered with some food. My reflexes were not there, my counter punching ability was not there. Something went terribly wrong."
Tarver, who months before the fight weighed in the neighborhood of 220 pounds as he bulked up for his role as the heavyweight champion opposite Sylvester Stallone in the film "Rocky Balboa," had to get down to 175 to fight Hopkins.
That substantial weight loss is what many have attributed to Tarver's poor performance.
Tarver is not the first fighter to allege that he was drugged or poisoned before a fight. After Lamon Brewster knocked out Wladimir Klitschko in the fifth round of a 2004 heavyweight title bout in Las Vegas, a big upset in which Klitschko faded badly after a big start, Klitschko's team made accusations that he had been poisoned.
The allegation was never proven.Comment
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LMAO at Tarver.Comment
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Vivian Harris
http://www.**********.com/pag/article13439.html
Vivian after getting stopped by Junior Witter.
"First I would like to thank God for getting me back home safe in the United States. It was a horrible fight I was in. We got there seven days before the fight. They wanted us to come in three days before the fight and they didn't appreciate that we wanted to come in seven days before the fight and I think that was wrong. When we got there they didn't give us any food money, have anybody to bring us to the gym. I had to train in my hotel. They didn't start paying for the hotel until Wednesday, but the fight was everything you shouldn't expect in a championship fight. There was nobody allowed from my corner to make sure that his hands were getting wrapped properly. He's not a big puncher, but every time I'd get hit and bruised up. It was the worst experience I had. When I had got dropped in the seventh round his corner jumped into the ring before I got counted out. That's a disqualification right there. His corner isn't supposed to jump into the ring until the referee calls off the fight."
VH: "This is the first fight I lost that I know I didn't lose fairly. I was in better shape and stronger than him until the night of the fight. Then I was weak and he was so powerful. Something went wrong in that dressing room, something went wrong with his blood and I hope we get a urine test or a blood test. But I'm not stressing that because they could control that too. I didn't even know I was training at his gym until after the fight. I had no protection over there, everything was in his favor and I got set up for the loss. They knew this was his biggest fight and they did what they had to make him win that fight by injecting him with whatever they had to."Comment
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Whether Vitali was kicking LL's ass or just barely beating him wasn't the point of Mike Tyson77's comment to you, TS. The point he was making was that you called Vitali one of the most "delusional" fighters ever for saying he won the fight. That's a stretch, even for a Klitschko hater. Yes, Lennox Lewis won the fight, and who knows how it would've turned out had the fight gone on. But it defies logic to say Vitali is delusional by saying he won if the guy was winning on points. Vitali knows he didn't actually WIN the fight; his point is, he was ahead and winning the fight and wants another crack at Lewis.Comment
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