NO RISK, NO REWARD:  TARVER DEFEATS JONES AGAIN!
By Ron Brashear

Tampa, Florida (IB-10/1/2005) – In front of a highly-charged and energetic crowd at the St Pete Forum, in Tampa, Florida, and televised to millions on HBO PPV, Antonio Tarver showed the boxing community and the fight fans that it is he, who stands as supreme in the Light Heavyweight division. Tarver improved his record to (24-3, 18 KOs) by winning a unanimous decision over Roy Jones Jr. (44-3, 38 KOs) by scores of 116-112 by judges Paul Herman & Michael Pernick and 117-111 by judge Peter Trematerra to retain his IBO light heavyweight championship.

This fight actually turned out to be much like I had anticipated it would. The big question was answered, how much risk was Roy willing to take? Answer: Not enough to take the champion’s title!

Tarver controlled most of the fight by just merely being the aggressor and doing more than RJJ. By the 8th round, you could hear the capacity crowd booing and thirsting for more action. Tarver actually stunned Jones in the 11th round with a solid left hook to Jones’ jaw. While Jones was able to remain on his feet, the fight was already in the bag for Tarver by this time.

Per compubox punch stats, Tarver almost doubled Jones in the output of punches thrown (620 to 320, and landed 158 to 85). This wasn’t an exciting fight but was a fight that validated that Tarver’s style and skills are too much for Roy Jones Jr. to deal with at this stage of their respective careers.

After the fight, Tarver told Jones after their 3 bouts, “Roy – you made more money than me for these fights, but I ain't mad at you.”

Roy offered, “I realized that I lost the fight but I’m satisfied with my performance.

So what’s next for Jones? Glen Johnson, who attended the fight, and was at the press conference, called out to Jones for rematch, and Roy responded with, “We can do that.”
So from this response, it would appear that Roy hasn’t ruled out the possibility for continuing his boxing career. All things considered, coming off two knockout losses, and a 12 month lay off, he gave a pretty good account of himself in regards to speed and balance. Had Jones been more willing to mix it up, we may have had a different end result.

What’s next for Tarver? Since there aren’t any big names in the light heavyweight division to present a challenge to Tarver, I would love to see him and Jeff “left hook” Lacy (20-0, 16 KOs) fight each other. Lacy, the current Super Middleweight Champion (168 lbs) would have to come up in weight to make this happen.

I caught up with Jeff “left hook” Lacy, who was at ringside, and he stated “I will be calling Tarver out after my next bout, which is with Scott Pemberton. That is definitely the fight that I want.” I sure hope this turns out to be the case.

You have just gone insideboxing.com

Ron Brashear can be contacted at brashear@insideboxing.com, ron@brasheargear.com