42-year-old Antonio Tarver wants Wladimir Klitschko title shot

By Boxing News - 09/29/2011 - Comments

Image: 42-year-old Antonio Tarver wants Wladimir Klitschko title shotBy Dan Ambrose: 42-year-old IBO cruiserweight champion Antonio Tarver (29-6, 20 KO’s) says he’s ready to move up to the heavyweight division again if IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (56-3, 49 KO’s) is interested in defending his titles against him.

Tarver will be turning 43 in November, and it’s highly unlikely that Wladimir is going to show interest in facing someone that old, even though Wladimir is poised to fight the hand-picked former cruiserweight champion Jean-Marc Mormeck on December 10th in what is almost guaranteed to be a sick mismatch with Wladimir whipping the deck with the short 5’11” Mormeck in a round or two.

Tarver, in an interview at fighthype.com, said “Wladimir, if you want to get beat, fight me. I got the recipe to beat him. I’m a southpaw. His fight hand won’t touch me.”

If Wladimir does opt to face Tarver at some point in the not too distant future, Wladimir’s right hand probably won’t even be needed to win this fight. Wladimir’s jab alone will dominate the 6’2″ Tarver. I saw Tarver’s fight at heavyweight last year when he defeated Nagy Aguilera in a 10 round decision and I can’t say I was very impressed with what I saw of Tarver. At heavyweight, his power was completely nonexistent and he had to win the fight by boxing the bigger Aguilera. Tarver won’t outbox Wladimir, let’s get that straight. And with Wladimir’s power in his jab, left hook and right hand, it’ll be a terrible mismatch, mush worse than Wladimir’s fight with former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye last July. At least Haye had defensive ability and power to keep Wladimir from just going after him. Tarver doesn’t have the power of the same defensive skills that Haye possesses, so he’ll be in deep trouble against the bigger, heavier Wladimir.

Instead of Tarver facing Wladimir or his brother WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, who Tarver also wants to fight, Tarver needs to go after someone like Tomasz Adamek. I know Adamek doesn’t have a title, but he does have a huge following in the U.S among his Polish fans in New Jersey, and if Tarver can talk Adamek into placing their fight in Poland in one of the soccer stadium,s then Tarver might do alright. That’s about the best he can hope for unless he can lure the WBA heavyweight paper champion Alexander Povetkin into fighting him. That’s a possibility, because Povetkin is rumored to be taking on 49-year-old Evander Holyfield in his first title defense.



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