Antonio Tarver – The Gatekeeper’s Promise
By Patrick Kehoe
“I just need Clinton Woods to show up and the rest will fall into place.”
Based on recent, past performances, as well as non-performances, boxing fans might add of long time light-heavyweight leading man Antonio Tarver: “We just need Antonio Tarver to show up and the rest will fall into place.”
Then again, we may be indulging in the evocations of memory and all good things past. Just what kind of illusions and slights of hand remain at the command of The Magic Man? Or does it really matter, if he’s ready, willing and still able to at least attempt to fight near to the level of his bravado?
“I am at my peek... Once again being undisputed light-heavyweight champion of the world, that’s what I am hell bent on achieving.”
Having the reputation as a guy who tends to fight and win only to reign and flounder, and then fight and regain his status only to stall, in an almost endless cycle of championship fights, Tarver has once again advanced into position for a shot at personal and professional redemption. The mentoring of his current promotional partner Gary Shaw enables and justifies Tarver’s still mainstream name recognition status near the top of the fight game’s food chain. And all he had to do, to go title questing, was make weight twice in 2007 and squeeze past Elvir Muriqi, before capping Danny Santiago. Yet his methods and results were analysed at ringside and in cyberspace as more about advancing his problematic options – just notching those wins as a reversal of fate, post-Hopkins – than establishing the case of his being a divisional force at 175. Does Tarver, c. 2008, really have the big weaponry and constitution under fire to rule at light-heavy?
Remember, though he’s only had 30 professional fights, he’ll hit the big 4-OH in November of this year. Perhaps, turning 40 come November, having turned pro at 28, means his attrition rate has been over determined, his handicaps exaggerated. Not that entropy – real or imagined – has anything necessarily to do with the calculus that makes for plotting championship boxing encounters.
Probably, the question is moot, especially where making money is concerned. In boxing, economics determines fitness, age and athletic infirmity are only points of minor irritation to be airbrushed over by flattering docu-bios. Fighting on a twin bill with Chad Dawson battling perennial light-heavyweight road block Glen Johnson, Tarver’s tryst with Clinton Woods is, after all, right in Tarver’s backyard of Tampa, Florida. Fellow Floridian Roy Jones will likely be in the house or at least in the neighbourhood and at the ready to be quoted on significant developments, such as a Tarver title triumph. And we thought all possibilities to do with Antonio Tarver and Roy Jones were historical artefacts, cold files.
Put the current light-heavyweight stud – WBC king Chad Dawson – in with Mr. Upset, the Road Warrior himself, Glen Johnson and pair up Antonio Tarver with Clinton Woods, for an honest to goodness title trinket box-off, IBF sanctioned, and you are likely to get a synergy hot enough to even motivate the mercurial Tarver. That’s what Gary Shaw, Showtime and most boxing fans are hoping happens. Yes, that same guy who was a dead-man-walking heading into the ring against B-Hop, via his own malaise and curious sense of entitlement. Then again, we all know, Tarver will be Tarver. You just never know when the southpaw punisher, capable of sublime left cross detonations will show up. But that’s how Tarver has been his entire career at the elite level of boxing; he can scale the heights of readiness to obliterate Roy Jones only to look past the self-proclaiming executioner Hopkins, all that practiced hatred aimed right at him, hurtling at his professional pride at lethal speed.
No wonder Tarver has had to make a career out of revivalism and playing the destroyer of arrogant men in rematches. Early on it was the late night partying and drugs, then it was mid-career boredom and financial crisis and a ‘disrespect’ complex dilemma, now it’s casting calls and old habits dying hard. Father Time? That we do not know, for sure.
Dare we expect a winning effort to annex the IBF belt from the Yorkshire man on the scale of his decapitation of then pound for pound luminary Roy Jones Jr., via that sublime left cross, May 15, 2004? Busting up Rocky Balboa doesn’t count as a prologue. Having to lose over 50 pounds from the time he wrapped on Rocky till he met Bernard Hopkins, doesn’t justify mediocrity either. The stigma of having put up such a pedestrian effort against Hopkins must factor into the subtext of his challenge against the over achiever Woods. For every moment of reflective regret admitting his mistakes and mismanagements, Tarver always returns to his sense of having been the ultimate vanquisher of Roy Jones. And that much we freely allow him.
“Everything I have had to endure and overcome has only made me stronger, it always has... You want to master your craft and when I’m in the shape that will allow my talent to do what I am capable to do.”
Still, fight fans still cannot quite believe the non-effort against Hopkins down the stretch, his stamina a folly of miscalculations the aged Hopkins took as a gift, with relish. Sorry, no, there are no excuses Antonio, especially for those once regarded as fitting the profile of a legitimate superstar.
Tarver, nevertheless, acts undaunted, at least for now, for the show must go on. “I want the BELTS... I want them around my waist... If it makes dollars, it makes sense... I need those belts to be undisputed light-heavyweight champion again... People keep looking back at my fight against Hopkins, but that wasn’t me in there. I was in shape, but... I wasn’t in fighting shape. But I’m in fighting shape for this one.”
Never let it be said Tarver takes a step backward without design. “I’ve fought the best, beat the best.”
Still, where has the passion and lethal intent gone that defined his fights with Roy Jones? Interested onlooker Chad Dawson points to Tarver’s recent big fight form as the most accurate gage of the four time champion: “Against Hopkins he didn’t show much. Looks like the magic is gone.”
Tarver has been around long enough to understand that knocking out Clinton Woods will silence all the most annoying character questions that have dogged him for the balance of 2007 and that are still, for many observers, unresolved talking points defining Tarver. If his name and reputation, cross indexed with his notoriety, have predictably opened the doors to promotional legitimacy at Showtime and a shot at Woods – the star dazzled Brit eager to bask in the bright lights of the American media glare – it’s what remains for Tarver to exploit. All can, for the moment, be forgotten and forgiven. After all, forty being the new thirty, is just another dubious moment in time when opportunity, ripe for reinvention, just happens to guys that hang around long enough.
In fact, Tarver has lived this life of celebrity fighter long enough to be philosophical. “When I have my back against the wall, I am at my best... Happiness is where I am in my life... I have that now... I have accomplished everything I wanted to in boxing... I took the right fights... Every fight was meaningful... I haven’t abused myself... Haven’t taken any real punishment.”
All boxing fans understand that there is ample president in the career archive of Antonio Tarver to prove that when he does get his training camps right and his mind keen to the task of taking on an opponent – men such as Eric Harding, Reggie Johnson, Montell Griffin, Roy Jones and Glenn Johnson – Tarver really does have the right stuff, the stuff of legends, more than enough to carry the fight and win at all costs. It’s just that we cannot guarantee it to ourselves, or he to us. Behind the sunglasses and the elegant suits, the practiced certitude and the ceremonial decrees, Antonio Tarver, at sometimes, does not know for sure either. It’s almost as if, he’s never quite sure just how things under his own charge will ultimately materialize. Even magicians fall prey to the mystery of things.
“I expect to and am confident that I not only will win, but will win in spectacular fashion. I am going to break Woods down and knock him out!” We have come to know that is for his benefit as much as ours and so he reaffirms for general benefit, “My body feels great; I got the best sparring possible... You want to always set goals for yourself... I am going to very much prove that I am still the gatekeeper of the light-heavyweight division. The greater the pressure the better I fight.”
“The unknown is out there... the ebb and flow... that’s what people love about boxing... you don’t see that in MMA, stealing victory out of the jaws of defeat... never underestimate The Magic Man... after this fight with Woods the picture is going to be a little bit clearer.”
Antonio Tarver has no time to wonder who still believes him, in him. And it’s immaterial anyway. Like the picture he’s trying to hold in his head, the one he wants to make appear. Of course, only winners are believed; for they are the ones that make the pictures of their imaginings into our recorded memories. That too is part of the transacting irony of greatness.
For Antonio Tarver history and redemption and the magic of the moment are convergent terms of reference, all he has left to try to trace out, reveal. So he has no choice but to tell us he’s all set to wield the confident mastery he’s always told us his boxing possesses.
In boxing, as in all things, confidence means you brave what must be done, as mastery circumscribes with near perfection what only looks improbable.
And for those that still believe in magic, Tarver promises, “I am going to leave it all out there; it’s all out on the line.”
Maybe what Tarver really has in store for us will look a lot more like passion than magic.
Either way, once again, it’s up to him and he knows it.
