By Mark Vester

Former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver has given his reasons for deciding to move up to the heavyweight division on October 15 against Nagy Aguilera. Tarver skipped over the cruiserweight division because he says the big moneymaker that he targeted, IBO champion Danny Green, was too scared to take the fight. He says Green is living his career on the shoulders of last year's TKO of Roy Jones Jr. Tarver was willing to give Green the homefield advantage by going to Australia to make the fight. 

“I wanted one fight at cruiserweight. Everyone knows it was Danny Green. But that guy has a yellow streak down his back. He’s a farce and he’s living off a victory over Roy Jones Jr. You can see in his last two fights he wanted nothing to do with anyone with a remote pulse or any type of life in him. So he’s continued to fight corpses so I just let him do what he does," Tarver said. 

"I just want him to recant the statement that I ducked him at any point or any time in his career. I’ve never ducked anyone who it didn’t make sense to fight at that time. He was begging me to fight but it just didn’t make sense and I had bigger fish to fry. When the time was right he did everything in his power to avoid me and show the world that he wanted nothing to do with me. I wanted to go down to Australia, beat his butt, come back with the cruiserweight world title and then move on to heavyweight, but I didn’t get that chance."

The heavyweight goal of Tarver is to fight one of the Klitschko brothers or David Haye. The Klitschko are giants compared to Tarver, but he believes that neither of them come close to his skill or ability. He plans to show those skills against Aguilera.

“Nagy Aguilera is a young and talented fighter who has beaten world champions but when you look at my experience, I’m sure he’s never faced a fighter with my experience, with my talent, with my skill level and with my ability. And I don’t think the Klitschkos have.  Boxing IQ and sense and just knowing what I have to do, how to avoid punches and counter-punches - that’s what I bring to the table. And if I can put a dent in these big boys I’m telling you, you’re talking to the next heavyweight champion," Tarver said.

“My punching power is going to be deceptive because they’re not going to expect it. It’s going to be the punch they don’t see with speed that’s going to get them out of there. I can crack, man. Anyone who has ever taken one of my punches knows that I can hit it and it’s natural power. It’ll be surprising to them and deceptive power.”