Deontay Wilder: There’s no way Tarver would hang in there with the Bronzebomber

By Boxing News - 08/15/2015 - Comments

1-DEONTAY WILDER VICTORY-06132015-5320By Scott Gilfoid: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (34-0, 33 KOs) saw former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver (31-6-1, 22 KOs) struggle to a 12 round draw last Friday night in his fight against former IBF cruiserweight champion Steve “USS” Cunningham (28-7-1, 13 KOs) at the Prudential Center, in Newark, New Jersey, USA.

While Deontay, 6’7”, gave the 46-year-old Tarver credit for being able to hang in there with the fast 204lb Cunningham, Wilder thinks that there’s no way that Tarver would have been able to go the distance with him had he been in there with him rather than Cunningham.

I have to agree with Deontay in his belief that he would have stopped Tarver. Wilder would have had too much size, speed, power, youth and dare I say talent for the aging Tarver to handle him. Tarver had an aging smaller fighter in 39-year-old Cunningham in the ring with him, and both of these guys fought like older guys.

Deontay is so much younger than both of them, and much faster and with a lot more power in either hand. Tarrver was getting knocked off balance by the light shots from Cunningham last night. You can only imagine what a huge puncher like Wilder would have been able to do to Tarver if he’d been the one nailing him with right hands and left hooks to the head.

The judges’ scores for the Tarver-Cunningham fight were as follows: 115-113 for Tarver, 115-113 for Cunningham, and 114-114.

It’s too bad Tarver ended up with a draw because that’s almost like a loss. It doesn’t do anything for Tarver’s career in terms of moving him further for a world title shot against Deontay. It would make Deontay look bad right now if he were to throw a bone to Tarver to give him a title shot off of a draw like last night’s against Cunningham.

As for Deontay, he’s expected to defend his WBC title against No.12 WBC Johann Duhaupas (32-2, 20 KOs) on September 26th in Birmingham, Alabama. The fight is expected to be announced next week for Premier Boxing Champions on NBC Sports Net.

Duhaupas is a very talented fighter. He looked very good in his last two fights against Manuel Charr and Erkan Teper. He beat Charr by a 10 round decision, but lost to Teper by a 12 round decision in a fight where the scores were wider than they should have been. I had Teper just barely winning fight based on his harder shots. Duhaupas out-boxed him in many of the rounds and if he had a little more punching power going for him, I think he would have easily won the fight because he was the better fighter of the two in terms of boxing skills.

Wilder is picking a very good fighter to show off his stuff in facing the 6’5” Duhaupas. This is the perfect opponent to get Wilder ready for a fight against IBO/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko next year if Wladimir can get past Tyson Fury on October 24th in their fight in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Wilder has a title defense next year against the smallish 6’2”, 225lb Alexander Povetkin, but I expect Wilder to have too much size for Povetkin to handle and it should be a rather easy fight for Wilder. He’s got Wladimir’s blueprint to follow to defeat Povetkin by using movement, jabs, single right hands and clinches to keep the Russian fighter from getting his shots off.

If Wilder can get through his fights against Duhaupas, Povetkin and Klitschko, he’s going to be on top of the world in the heavyweight division and well on his way to becoming a huge star in the sport. Wilder just need to beat Fury, his little nephew Hughie Fury, and then winner of the Anthony Joshua vs. Dillian Whyte fight. If Wilder beats all of those guys, he’ll be able to sit on all the world titles and basically do what Wladimir has done for the last decade in just picking and choosing the guys he wants to fight. Once Wilder beats a small handful of heavyweights, he’s going to be left with guys like Bryant Jennings, Kubrat Pulev, and Mike Perez. In other words, easy guys for him.



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