By Chris Williams: Antonio Tarver (28-6, 19 KO’s) is giving himself an A+ for his one-sided 10 round unanimous decision over Nagy Aguilera (16-5, 11 KO’s) last Friday night at the Buffalo Run Casino, in Miami, Oklahoma. Tarver started off slow in the 1st round but quickly threw off the 17-month ring rust and began to punish the slower Aguilera with straight left hands and mean uppercuts to the head. Tarver looked like Tarver of old as the fight progressed into the last half of the fight when he was really punishing Aguilera with combinations and flurries.

Aguilera fought perhaps the dumbest fight that you could, as he retreated to the ropes in every round like a glorified sparring partner. Tarver took advantage of this by punishing Aguilera with shots. Tarver likely won’t have the same luck in the future when he starts taking on better heavyweights than this, but he would be silly not to have taken advantage of Aguilera’s amateurish mistakes. Tarver ended up winning the fight by the scores of 98-92, 98-92 and 98-92.

In an article at the joplinglobe.com, Tarver said “With a 17 month layoff and I’m 41-years-old, A-plus, man. I had a real guy in front of me, a live guy. He wasn’t going to lay down. You saw that he took some tremendous shots. Anybody with less heart would have been knocked out, but I take my hat off to Nagy.” Tarver needs to add more weight to his frame, because the reason why he wasn’t able to knock Aguilera out wasn’t because he had such a great chin. It was because Tarver is simply carrying around too much fat on his frame and not enough muscle. He looks soft around the middle and probably is no more than a cruiserweight in terms of the muscle he’s carrying around. 200 pound cruiserweights are really too light to compete with the bigger heavyweights, who are used to getting hit by much bigger fighters.

Tarver, without the flab that he’s carrying around, is really nothing more than a cruiserweight. In terms of muscle, I think Tarver is the equivalent of a 190 pound cruiserweight with 30 pounds of flab. Tarver has to lose that baby fat and add muscle if he wants to beat better fighters than the 2nd tier Aguilera.

Tarver says “I didn’t get hit with much. I’m always cautious with my punches. We’re not that brave that we’re going to stand in there and take unnecessary punishment. We have to muscle up a little bit. I’m only 221. We want to lose a little bit of weight, put on a little bit more muscle and test our power next time around.” I think it will be a trade off. Tarver will likely trim off 10 pounds pounds of lard and put on 10 pounds of muscle and still only weigh 220. That won’t be nearly enough to beat the better heavyweights in the division, although I seriously doubt that Tarver will fight any of the good heavyweights. He’s going to likely take the backdoor to a heavyweight title shot by fighting 2nd tier heavyweights until he’s selected for a terrible beating by one of the Klitschko brothers. At only 6’1″, 220, Tarver will look like a little kid against one of the Klitschko brothers and quickly get swatted out of the ring like a fly.