By Aaron Klein: IBF light heavyweight champion Clinton Woods (41-3-1, 24 KOs) will be putting his title on the line this Saturday night against former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver (26-4, 19 KOs) at the St. Pete Times Forum, in Tampa, Florida. The fight, which has so far failed the building much excitement aside from a few loyal British fans of Woods, is an especially important bout for Woods for if he can beat the 39 year-old Tarver, there’s a strong chance that Woods may be the next opponent for super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe.
Of course, there’s that must happen for that bout the eventually occur, starting with both Calzaghe, who is facing Bernard Hopkins on April 19th in Las Vegas, and Woods have to win their bouts. More than that, in particular for Woods, it has to be an impressive win, ideally by a knockout victory. Woods, 35, is still relatively unknown to American audiences, so for many fans this will be the first time they’ve ever seen him fight before.
In facing Tarver, Woods will have his work cut out for him because he’ll be facing a former champion who still has a lot left in the tank despite his ripe age. Though it’s still a mystery how much Tarver does have left of his once excellent boxing skills, since he’s not used them against quality opposition since facing Bernard Hopkins in 2006, a fight which Tarver lost by a unanimous decision. Since then, Tarver has carefully selected his opponents well, beating Danny Santiago and Elvir Muriqi in his last two fights.
Tarver didn’t look good at all against Muriqi, and some would say he didn’t win the fight at all. Tarver did, however, fight impressively against Santiago, stopping him in the 4th round on…. But, then again, Santiago wasn’t ranked in the top 10, and appeared to have been selected as a soft opponent, one in which Tarver could look good against. Certainly, if Tarver fights the same way he did against Muriqi, then Woods will have an easy time beating him because Woods is a much better fighter than Muriqi, in my estimation.
It’s been a long four years since Tarver recorded his best win of his career – a 2nd round KO of boxing great Roy Jones Jr. in May 2004, The fight made Tarver an overnight star in the boxing world, though in his subsequent bouts he failed to follow up with any equally exciting fights. He did, however, once again defeat Jones, beating him by a 12-round unanimous decision, but the fight was mostly a tactical battle and boring to watch. Due to the lack of big-named stars in the light heavyweight division, outside of Jones, Tarver had few options for big money fights in recent years. It’s only now, with the addition of champions like Chad Dawson, that the light heavyweight division is finally getting some quality stars.
Dawson, by the way, has been calling out Tarver for the past year and has no luck in getting him to show interest in fighting him. At 39, Tarver is in a situation where he can’t afford to lose against Woods. If Tarver loses, he likely destroys any chance for him to be matched up in a near future light heavyweight championship bout; That’s something that he can’t afford to have happen, in that at his age, it would take too much out of his career for him to work his way back into another title shot. If he does lose, he should consider either retiring or maybe losing some weight and moving down to the super middleweight division, where there are a few more stars in which to fight.
Woods, however, has the most riding on this fight, namely the chance for a multi-million dollar fight with Calzaghe. Apparently, Calzaghe has an interest in picking up a second world title in another division outside of the super middleweight class, and wouldn’t mind fighting Woods in order to make that happen.
As I mentioned previously, the fight likely won’t generate much interest from the American fans unless Woods does something quite extraordinary in his bout with Tarver this Saturday, something like a Kelly Pavlik-like knockout. I think the chances of that happening are slim and none, honestly.
Calzaghe would be better served, if he truly wants to add another title against an exciting opponent, by taking on Chad Dawson rather than Woods. Nothing wrong with Woods, but he’s clearly not in the same class as Dawson is, and hence wouldn’t be nearly as interesting an opponent for Calzaghe. If Calzaghe makes the mistake of fighting Woods, it would be no different than his usual custom of fighting mostly soft opponents like, say, Mario Veit, who Calzaghe fought twice in his career.