JONES-TARVER POST-FIGHT ANALYSIS

November 10, 2004 - by Bert Sugar

Somewhere back in the antediluvian days of boxing famed sportswriter Bugs Baer, describing the Jack Dempsey-Luis Firpo fight in which Firpo knocked Dempsey through the ropes, wrote: :If the fight had been held on a barge, Firpo would have been champion." Had but Baer been alive some 80 years later covering the Roy Jones Jr.-Antonio Tarver fight he might well have written: "If the fight had been in a bar, Tarver would still be champion."

For the fight was a classic case of who you were going to believe: your eyes or the officials' scorecards. Silent heresies of reason would have you believe that the fighter who was the aggressor, who inflicted the most damage-at times pinning his opponent on the ropes and cannonading him with shot-after-shot--and continually outmaneuvering his opponent should have won.

But trying to explain the judges' decision expansively, if not plausibly--because nothing about it was plausible, especially the lopsided 117-111 score on one judge's card for Jones--all you came away with was that Jones won simply because he was Roy Jones Jr.. And the feeling that had each been wearing trunks with the other's name on them, Tarver would have won because the judges would have thought he was Jones.

Otherwise how to explain the first round? What little action there was--with Tarver throwing light jabs in Jones' direction and Jones reaching out with his right and barely touching Tarver's long, lanky midriff--came near the end of the round when Tarver caught Jones on the ropes and pummeled him with nary a return punch coming in return. And yet one judge gave the round to Jones, apparently rewarding his gentleness.

Tarver, who had gone into the fight as an 8-to-1 underdog, with many feeling that if his chances were dominoes they'd have been all zeroes, continued to carry the action for the first four rounds. By the fifth it became apparent that Jones, who had been viewed by all as having superhuman talent was something less, even "vincible." And that his having to take off 20 or so pounds to make the light heavy limit had begun to take its toll, his legs, once full of victories, now deader than the proverbial twopenny.

In the middle rounds, as both stood there, as bereft of movement as a sail without wind, posing and posturing, the Mandalay Bay crowd began to make its displeasure known, booing and at times clapping, partly to exhort Jones to do something, anything, and partly to cheer home their 8-to-1 money on Tarver.

But what was becoming abundantly clear with each passing round was the shocking, almost indigestible knowledge that the man hailed as boxing's greatest "Pound-for-Pound" fighter and one of its all-time greats now appeared to be oh-so-ordinary, his movements looking as if they were chained to Morpheus' slow carriage as he walked through his motions--almost as if the only thing missing was a note from his mother explaining his emotional absence.

And then there were the times he retreated to the ropes, feet rooted to the spot, throwing up his hands in a picket defense while Tarver whomped on him, picking through with more than an occasional left hand. It was not quite Ali's "Rope-a-dope," Ali having treated opponents with a "trespassers-will-be-prosecuted" rat-a-tat in return for their efforts. Instead, Jones seemed to be letting Tarver have his way with him, a way not seen by the judges.

With victory all but tied up neatly in the tote, Tarver, for some reason that will never be understood, gave up his jab and retreated during the last two rounds despite trainer Buddy McGirt's not-so-quiet exhortations to come forward and rain more punches on the tired and tiring Jones. And in so doing might have given the judges a chance to once again coronate Jones as boxing's greatest "Pound-for-Pound" with the decision.

And despite Michael Buffer delivering the judges' decision for Jones (117-111,116-112 and 114-114) with all the solemnity of Moses handing down his Tablets from the Mount, like the olde New Yorker cartoon, I still say "it's spinach and the hell with it."

All I had to do was look at the faces of the two combatants--Tarver's without a mark; Jones' bruised, battered and mousey--to know the winner. At least if it had been a bar fight, not a Vegas fight, I'd have known the winner.