(Photo: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: 43-year-old IBO cruiserweight champion Antonio Tarver (29-6-1, 20 KO’s) seemed to recognize that the blemish on his record last night with his 12 round draw against unbeaten contender Lateef Kayode (18-0-1, 14 KO’s) wasn’t one of his better performances.

However, Tarver also wasn’t impressed with Kayode’s performance, in particular the constant running he did.

Tarver said after the bout “I beat him in every facet of boxing. He’s supposed to be a power puncher. All he did was run all night. I had to chase him down. I hurt him all day. I started slow but that’s the only thing he got credit for. Maybe there were some close rounds at the beginning, but I swept him from round six.”

Tarver pretty much sweep Kayode from the 6th, but he also appeared to lose the last round by not landing enough shots. Tarver well enough to either get a draw or win by a slight margin. I don’t agree that Kayode did enough to win because he was really struggling from the 6th round on, and he’s just lucky that he was facing a fat and out of shape Tarver because he would have been knocked out had he been younger or in shape.

Kayode did do a lot of running and that no doubt was the strategy designed by his trainer Freddie Roach. He must have seen something from Kayode in sparring that told him that he didn’t have the chin to hold up to a war with Tarver. Indeed, if Kayode had stood in one place and slugged with Tarver, he would have been knocked out by the 5th or 6th round. Kayode doesn’t have the chin to fight toe-to-toe against punchers like Tarver.

And the thing of it is, there are stronger punchers than Tarver in the division, and I see Kayode having a lot of problems even runs against those guys. Kayode lacks the power to fight the stronger punchers, and his chin is too fragile. It looks Roach is trying to make him a hit and run fighter. I wish him a lot of luck with that strategy because it won’t work when he gets put in with someone good.