By Dave Lahr: Last Friday night, light heavyweight contender Tavoris Cloud (20-0, 18 KO’s) defeated former IBF light heavyweight champion Clinton Woods by a 12 round decision to pick up the vacant International Boxing Federation light heavyweight title. While I thought that Cloud looked nothing short of sensational in beating Woods, I think it’s still a little early for Cloud to be thrown in with a fighter like Chad Dawson (28-0, 17 KO’s).
Honestly, I don’t think that Cloud, 27, is ready at this point to beat a fighter as good as Dawson. I say this because I saw a lot of flaws in Cloud’s performance on Friday night against the 37-year-old Woods, most noticeably with Cloud’s poor defense and tendency to block punches with his face.
Woods is far from being a big puncher, but his shots were snapping Cloud’s head around as if he was a huge puncher. That tells me that Cloud needs to do something to fix his leaky defense before he gets to the stage of fighting a good fighter like Dawson.
Yeah, I know that Cloud badly wants to fight Dawson and thinks that Chad is running from him because he chose to fight Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson, two 40-year-olds for big money rather than take a smaller payday against him.
However, Cloud needs to not let his judgment get clouded by Dawson choosing to fight Johnson and Tarver and falsely think that Dawson is afraid of him, because he’s probably not. Dawson did the smart thing by choosing the money fights rather than taking a smaller payday against an unknown fighter like Cloud, who hadn’t fought in over a year until Friday’s bout with Woods.
Dawson would have been crazy to turn down a bigger payday to fight an unproven, little known slugger like Cloud. Dawson did what anyone would do in his situation – take the bigger money.
Cloud would do well to start defending his IBF light heavyweight crown against the best possible opponents that he can. Right off the bat, Cloud is unlikely to get a fight against Roy Jones Jr., who is ranked number #3 in the IBF.
That’s not going to happen and Cloud will just end up frustrated, because Jones won’t want to fight him because of the little money that he’d get in a fight against Cloud. Besides, it would be a dangerous fight for Jones.
I don’t know that Cloud could beat Jones, though, because for all we know, Cloud could be another Jeff Lacy and might get a boxing lesson from Jones. Cloud didn’t look fast at all against Woods last Friday, and his lack of hand speed might be a problem against a much quicker fighter like Jones.
Glen Johnson is ranked at number #4 in the IBF, but he’s busy with an upcoming fight against Dawson, so he’s out for the time being. There’s Yusaf Mack at number #6, a hard puncher with a style similar to Cloud’s. That would be a great fight because it would match two sluggers.
I can see this being a good television fight. Another option would be Chris Henry, ranked number #8. He’s a high pressure slugger not unlike Cloud. He’d be right in Cloud’s face all night long and unless Cloud fixes his defense, I could see him getting knocked out by Henry.
Nathan Cleverly, ranked #10, is another good option. He has lot of power and likes to trade shots. He’s dangerous, though, because he has good power and he’s younger than Cloud. He might just knock Cloud out if the two get into a war.
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