Over the weekend, FightHype.com caught up with former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver, who was on hand at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, Washington to call the action during Showtime's Bantamweight Tournament. Never one to shy away from an interview, Tarver spoke with us about his role as a commentator for the network. Although most of the time he enjoys it, Tarver admits that there's one particular assignment that may prove to be a little more difficult than normal. "I got my mixed emotions about next week. I gotta go to Canada and I'ma commentate Hopkins' fight. That's gonna be kind of tough for me, but I'm going to get through it," he explained, referring to this weekend's clash between Bernard Hopkins and WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal. No stranger to each other, both Tarver and Hopkins have shared a rivalry inside and outside of the ring ever since Tarver burst onto the scene with his spirited, but majority decision loss to Roy Jones Jr. in November of 2003.
The bad blood first surfaced shortly after that bout, when Tarver accused Hopkins, who was the undisputed middleweight champion at the time, of picking on smaller fighters for attempting to secure a lucrative bout with Oscar De La Hoya, who was campaigning as at jr. middleweight. Naturally, Hopkins took offense to those accusations and fired back with some harsh comments that may have struck a nerve. "He's talking about me with the junior middleweights, but we're only six pounds away from each other. He's 15 pounds away, so maybe he can't calculate the difference. So Not only is he an ex-drug addict, and an ex-crackhead, but he can't count. Maybe he didn't have any schooling or something. Or maybe he's just relapsed; maybe his people need to send him back to rehab," Hopkins would reply.
Ouch! Although it's no secret that Tarver got a late start on his pro career due to a drug addiction, those comments from Hopkins may have hit a little too close to home, sparking a war of words between both men that continued for over two years until they finally met inside the ring in June of 2006 to settle their differences. It was Hopkins, however, who got the last laugh, scoring a knockdown and thoroughly dominating his nemesis over the course of 12 rounds to win a lopsided unanimous decision in one of Tarver's worst performances. Although the loss may have humbled Tarver momentarily, it did little to end his disdain or his criticism of Hopkins. In the years following their clash, Tarver continued to take shots at his old rival, critiquing his performances with comments like, "I don't think he sells tickets. I don't think he's an exciting fighter to watch. He's not a fan friendly fighter."
That being said, it should come as no surprise who Tarver is favoring to win this weekend's clash between Hopkins and Pascal. "You know, I gotta go with youth. I think the young fighter just has a lot of speed, a lot of ability and we never know. But Hopkins got a lot of tricks up his sleeve, so, you know, if he can enforce his will on the young fighter, then he got a chance. But we're gonna see. I don't know," Tarver would tell FightHype's own Mike Juhas when asked for his prediction. While he did his best to play his role as an unbiased commentator, Tarver did get one quick dig, commenting, "You're only as good as your last fight and, honestly, I don't think he looked too good his last fight against Roy Jones. I think it was one of his worst performances in many years."
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