Tarver-Cunningham fight to draw; Glowacki stops Huck in 11th

By Boxing News - 08/14/2015 - Comments

150814_Fights_1961(Photo credit: Ed Diller/DiBella Entertainment) By Jim Dower: In a disappointing outcome, former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver (31-6-1, 22 KOs) fought to a 12 round draw against former IBF cruiserweight champion Steve Cunningham (28-7-1, 13 KOs) on Friday night on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike TV at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. The final judges’ scores were 115-113 for Cunningham, 115-114 for Tarver, and 114-114.

After witnessing an exciting fight in the co-feature between Marco Huck and Krzyzstof Glowacki, the boxing fans were kind of spoiled by the time the Tarver-Cunningham fight took place for the main event. The fans expected nonstop action, but unfortunately the 46-year-old Tarver was only capable of throwing occasional hard left hand power shots. Before long, the crowd started booing the lack of action, and they pretty much continued to boo off and on from the 2nd round until the 12th.

#6 IBF Cunningham landed 154 of 678 punches according to CompuBox and was the far busier fighter of the two. #9 WBA Tarver landed 141 of 450 punches.

Tarver landed the harder shots in the 2nd half of the fight, and you can make an argument that he got the better of Cunningham during this portion of the match despite the fact that Tarver was outworked. However, Tarver spent so many rounds being outworked by Cunningham, it was impossible to see him as the clear winner. Tarver just looked lazy and incapable of throwing enough punches to win any rounds in a conclusive manner. Even the rounds that you could give to Tarver were ones that could have easily gone the other way because of Cunningham throwing and landing more shots.

The outcome of this fight is a huge blow to Tarver’s career because he needed a win here to get him in positon for a world title fight against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder or IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. The only way Tarver is going to get title shot now from either of those champions is if they that it’s worthwhile to them for a voluntary defense. Deontay might want to next year, but I seriously doubt that Wladimir will bother. There’s no payoff fighting a guy who is nearing 50 like Tarver, because if Wladimir wins, he won’t get any credit due to Tarver’s advanced age. If Wladimir’s struggles to win, he’ll take a lot of criticism. If Wladimir loses, it would be a real shocker and a big negative in terms of his career.

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#1 WBO Krzyzstof Glowacki (25-0, 16 KOs) pulled of a big upset in making a comeback in the 11th round to stop WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck (38-3-1, 26 KOs) to capture his WBO title.

Trailing in the 11th round, Glowacki, 29, caught Huck with a left-right combination to put him down on the canvas. Huck, 30, barely beat the count in getting back up at the count of eight. Glowacki then unloaded on a badly hurt Huck with a flurry of shots to send him down into the ropes for the 2nd knockdown of the round. Referee David Fields then halted the fight at 2:39 of the 11th round.

Earlier in the fight, Huck knocked Glowacki down with a big left hook to the head in the 6th round. However, Glowacki rallied and was able to make it out of the round by attacking Huck. In the 8th, Huck hurt Glowacki again and was teeing off on him at will for the last minute of the round.

In rounds nine and ten, Huck dominated the action with his hard shots. Going into the 11th round, the fight appeared to be Huck’s to win. Unfortunately for him, he was nailed by a hard left hook to the head in the 11th. Huck backed straight up after getting hit, and this allowed Glowacki to nail Huck with a right to the head to put him down.

In hindsight, Huck needed to be more in control in the 11th, as he was ahead in the fight and could have won just by being careful. Instead of being careful, Huck left himself open to the southpaw Glowacki’s straight left hand and that was all it took to hurt him.

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Other boxing results on the card:

Luis Rosa TD 6 Giovanni Caro
Kamil Laszczyk UD 8 Oscauris Frias
Jarrett Hurd TKO 7 Jeff Lentz
Mikkel LesPierre UD 6 Kevin Womack Jr



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