By Jim Dower: 42-year-old Antonio Tarver (29-6, 20 KO’s) really took IBO cruiserweight champion Danny Green (31-4, 27 KO’s) to school on Wednesday night in taking him out at the end of the 9th round to capture his International Boxing Organization title in front of a large pro-Green crowd at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney, Australia.

The crowd had very little to cheer about in this fight and spent most of the time talking softly while Tarver made Green look pretty much like an over-matched club fighter for the most part. Tarver dominated the entire fight and teed off on Green at will with straight left hands. At the end of the 9th round, Tarver caught Green in the corner and landed a straight left to the chin that hurt him.

Tarver then unloaded with a flurry of shots while Green still has back to the ropes. Green dodged some of the shots but was hit a number of hard punches that had him staggering and bloody faced as the bell sounded to end the 9th. Green looked like a drunk as he staggered back to his corner and it’s really not surprising that the fight was stopped at that point because there was no way that Green would have survived the start of the 10th.

Tarver would have flurried on him again and finished the job. Green really was out of his element in this fight. He was knocked down in the 2nd with a straight left hand from Tarver when Green tried to rush him. After that knockdown, Green chose to only rarely come at Tarver. It was at this point that Green opted to fight on the outside, which is uncharacteristic of him because he’s always been a pressure fighter.

Green let Tarver do the pressuring and spent long stretches of the fight with his back against the ropes looking to counter Tarver when he would land one of his straight left hands. Much of the time when Green would counter, he’d land rabbit punches and the referee failed to take points off for them. Also, when Tarver clinched, Green was landing some occasional rabbit punches there as well. Again, the referee did little other than warn Green.

Green did have one good round when he landed some nice body shots in the 7th. Tarver was doing little in the round besides jabbing and using feints, and this allowed Green to finally attack for the first time. He did well when he was on the attack, and it’s too bad Green didn’t fight that way the entire bout. However, Tarver wasn’t letting him because he was just too fast and powerful with his left hands. He kept catching Green with straight lefts that caused Green to back completely off as if signaling that he didn’t want anymore. Tarver was a lot faster and when he landing his left hands, he had Green pinned to the ropes. If you’ve watched some of Green’s fights in the past couple of years against mostly soft opposition, it was shocking to see him getting handled so easily by Tarver.

It’s unclear where Green can from here. A loss like this has to be devastating for him. I suppose he can go back to fighting no name fighters but will the Australian fans still want to see him fight after watching him get embarrassed by Tarver? As for Tarver, he should go after the top guy in the cruiserweight division WBO champion Marco Huck. If Tarver can do this to Green, he can probably do just as well against a limited slugger like Huck. However, Huck’s management probably won’t want to put him in with a guy like Tarver after watching this fight.