By Scott Gilfoid: It’s been almost a week now since former IBF light heavyweight champion Clinton Woods (42-5-1, 24 KO’s) took a one-sided beating from the young knockout artist Tavoris Cloud (20-0, 18 KO’s) last Friday night, but there’s still no word from the 37-year-old Woods about whether he’ll be hanging up the gloves or not.

Woods had been saying that this would be his last fight if he were defeated by Cloud. However, Woods still hasn’t said the words that so many of his British boxing are afraid to hear, the dreaded “R” word. Things aren’t looking good for Woods, though.

According to The Sun, Woods’ promoter, Dennis Hobson, is poised to tell Woods to retire, saying “I don’t want to see Clinton take punishment like he did ever again.” Punishment is what Woods took a lot of against Cloud, as the American fighter averaged 100 punches thrown per round and ended up throwing 1000 punches in the fight, many of them connecting to the head and face of the 37-year-old Woods.

The judges must have been feeling sympathetic towards Woods, because they each scored it 116-112. I had Woods only winning one or two rounds, at best, and even those rounds were incredibly close. Hobson, however, looks as if he’s ready to let Woods go for his own benefit, remarking “If he tells me when we meet again in 10 days’ time he wants to carry on, I don’t know what I will say to him.”

Hobson really sounds like a good guy. He must know how hard Woods would have to work to get back into another title shot situation, and it wouldn’t likely be worth all the punishment that Woods would have to take at this point just to get another shot against one of the champions.

You got to figure that it would take at least a year for Woods to work his way into another title shot and by then he’d be 38-years-old and more worn than he is now. Currently, Woods has lost two out of his last three fights.

That’s kind of telling right there about how much he has left. Woods could probably still beat a lot of good fighters like Glen Johnson and some of the other top light heavyweights, but if the money isn’t big, why waste time taking needless punishment.

If Woods was a defensive artist like Roy Jones Jr. or if he had a lot of power like Cloud or Johnson, I would feel okay with him deciding to fight onward. But, Woods fights in a straight up European style and tends to get hit a lot.

That was pretty much evident in his fight with Cloud last Friday night as Woods was tagged often by Cloud, and he didn’t seem to have the presence of mind to get to the outside where he could take advantage of his height and reach. The reason he couldn’t, perhaps, is because that’s not the way that Woods fights.

He doesn’t fight on the outside and never really has. Woods could certainly continue to fight and do well at the domestic level, but it appears that he wants to fight the best fighters in the world, and that’s the problem for him right now. He doesn’t appear to have the skills needed to compete with them anymore.