By Allan Fox: 46-year-old former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver (31-6, 22 KOs) has no interest in having to toil away slowly to try and get a fight against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in the future.
Instead, Tarver is hoping that if he can get a big name like David Haye to fight him, he’ll quickly get a fight against Wladimir if he can knock Haye out. Tarver is confident that he’ll beat the British heavyweight if he can just get him to agree to a fight with him.
Tarver is so confident that he can beat the 34-year-old Haye that he’s willing to travel to the UK and fight Haye in front of his own boxing fans.
Tarver is ranked #10 by the World Boxing Association. While that’s a good ranking, it’s still low enough to where it might take Tarver a good 2-3 years before he can get pushed up high enough to get a title shot against Wladimir, and even then he’d have to beat one or two top contenders to get the spot. Tarver won’t get pushed up to the #1 WBA mandatory spot without beating a top contender or two, and it’s unclear if he’ll be able to do that if he keeps aging.
Without a fight against someone like Haye, we’re probably looking at Tarver getting a title shot by then time he reaches his 48th or 49th birthday. Bernard Hopkins showed that he’s still a good fighter at 49, but it’s very hard to picture Tarver being able to do the same as him.
“He [Haye] keeps insisting that he’s the second-biggest name in the heavyweight division,” Tarver said. “I need him to be my set-up guy to beat in order for me to get a world title shot against Wladimir Klitschko. Haye has one-punch knockout ability and he’s aggressive. Once I beat him, though, I want Klitschko.”
Haye will likely not be interested in fighting a heavyweight as old as Tarver, because it’s a lose-lose situation for Haye. If he beats Tarver, which is likely, Haye won’t get any credit whatsoever. And if Haye were to lose or made to struggle to beat Tarver, then it will cause Haye to receive a great deal of criticism.
Haye doesn’t need that kind of heat right now. He hasn’t fought in two years since his win over Dereck Chisora in 2012, and he needs some solid wins over decent heavyweights to start putting him in position for a world title shot against one of the champions.
Tarver recently beat Klitschko trainer Johnathon Banks by a 7th round knockout this month. Neither fighter looked good in that bout, but Banks was especially awful.
The most likely scenario for Tarver is him having to wait 2-3 years to get a world title shot, and that’s only if he keeps winning and fighting at least three times a year. Fighting only once a year isn’t going to get the job done.
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