ANTONIO TARVER W12 CLINTON WOODS

Antonio Tarver was slick and clever, and I give him credit for fighting a well-planned, winning fight, but it was as if Clinton Woods showed up in body but not in spirit for their light-heavyweight title bout on Showtime.

Woods stoically took punches for 12 rounds but I thought he was very disappointing. Elvir Muriqi gave Tarver a much better fight than this, but then Muriqi gambled a bit and got stuck into the “Magic Man”. Woods looked like a bewildered lad from the suburbs on his first day at university, awed by the surroundings.

Really, Woods’s speech after the fight, while certainly humble, said it all: “I was a skinny boy from Sheffield. I never dreamt of things like this.”

Tarver, and good luck to him for it, quickly sensed the British boxer’s apparent lack of self-belief and set about winning the fight in a sensible if unexciting way, popping his upright, slow opponent, with quick bursts of punches from his southpaw posture and then giving him feints and crafty moves.

I had expected much more from Woods. He knew he was in with a superior technician and that his only chance was to go right after him and make this a tough, physical fight — the way his old rival Glen Johnson had done against Chad Dawson on the same show. Yet Woods seemed as much unwilling as unable to drive himself forward. Woods boxed as if he had never seen a southpaw in his life, clueless and confounded at every turn and unable to summon the effort of will simply to go right at his tormentor.

Interviewed on Showtime during the fight’s later stages and battle-worn after his earlier, hard-earned win, Chad Dawson said that Woods didn’t want to take chances, which was how it appeared to me, I am afraid to say.

The scores of 116-112 from the Australian judge and 117-111 from Florida judge John Rupert were kind to Woods. Doncaster judge Howard Foster seemed about right with his 119-109 score.

I was astonished when the “press row” scores after 10 rounds showed that Pat Sheehan of British tabloid The Sun had Woods ahead 96-95 while a name new to me, Martin Rogers from Yahoo! Sports, had the fight even. Were they sitting next to each other? This was Tarver’s fight all the way.

Showtime analyst Al Bernstein optimistically hoped that Woods might eventually land “something of note” but it was never going to happen. Tarver, in outstanding condition, picked up his pace and totally pulled away from Woods in the last two rounds, really pasting his outclassed oppnent in the 12th round in particular. Tarver’s big finish capped a solid showing.

This was, in fact, the best boxing we have seen from Tarver in a long time. When he struggled against Muriqi I thought he looked like a fighter who was coming to the end of the road. Memo to self: Don’t be so quick to write off a veteran with big-fight experience.