Can Tarver talk way to win over Dawson?

LAS VEGAS – Antonio Tarver is one of those guys who could talk his way into thinking you’d made a good buy for paying $10,000 for a canary yellow 1984 Cadillac with about 150,000 miles and a transmission held together by clothes hangers.

If Elisabeth Hasselbeck ever walks off “The View,” Antonio’s the guy to give the show some diversity. He’d shout it up with the rest of the gals just fine, though.

The problem with so much talking in boxing, however, is that Tarver has some folks believing he deserves a spot on a pedestal near Archie Moore, Bob Foster, Billy Conn, Tommy Loughran and Michael Spinks as one of the greatest light heavyweights of all time.

Tarver isn’t the best light heavyweight of this generation, let alone of all time, and he’ll have his hands more than full on Saturday when he meets unbeaten Chad Dawson for the IBF strap at the Palms Hotel in a nationally televised fight on Showtime.

He’s 27-4 with 19 knockouts and has had a good, but hardly great career. He’s 2-1 in a series with Roy Jones Jr., split a pair of taut bouts with Glen Johnson and was routed despite being a heavy favorite by Bernard Hopkins.

He fought two other notable fighters, splitting a pair of bouts with Eric Harding and winning a split decision over Reggie Johnson in 2002. Johnson was an ex-middleweight and ex-light heavyweight champion whose best days were long past him when he and Tarver fought. Johnson was in the 18th year of his career, was nearing his 36th birthday and had become a part-time fighter by that point.

To listen to Tarver, though, Hall of Fame executive director Ed Brophy is probably coming up with plans to build a wing devoted exclusively to him.

Despite Dawson’s 26-0 mark and 17 knockouts, Tarver is steadfast in his belief that Dawson is going to be exposed on Saturday.

“They got to blow his head up to the point where he can have the confidence that he’s going to think he’s going to need to come in here and fight the fight that they feel that he is going to need to fight to beat me,” Tarver said. “But you know everybody has a game plan until they get hit in the mouth. My whole thing is this: They talk about Clinton Woods. You think Clinton Woods came all the way, this far, to America to look as bad as I made him look? No. But it’s easy on the outside looking in. But when you are in the lion’s den, it’s whole new ball game.

“Like I said, I got a lot of Chad Dawsons on my résumé. He don’t have not one Antonio Tarver. So I’m taking him into uncharted waters, into places he’s never been before, and he thinks it’s all about fighting. But he is going to get a crash course of what it really feels like to be in there with a legendary fighter. A great fighter. He ain’t fought a great fighter yet until (Saturday).”

Tarver deserves a lot of credit for making every conference call, every interview and every news conference entertaining.

It almost makes you want to vomit when you hear fighter after fighter after fighter walk up to the podium, thank the promoter, thank the television network, thank the venue, thank the opponent taking the fight, promise that he’s in the best shape of his life and that he’s going to make it a great fight.

It’s about as appealing as a root canal, and when you add the parade of hotel executives, promoters, television executives and assorted other hangers on who get up to say the same thing makes the boxing news conference one of the most mind-numbing events of the year.

But even with a vastly overinflated opinion of himself, at least Tarver makes it funny and interesting.

During one conference call, Tarver and Dawson must have had 10 separate interludes where they ignored the media and the moderators and jawed at each other.

Tarver started it by saying directly to Dawson, “I’m going to show you how an old man teach a young boy new tricks. He going to respect his elders after Oct. 11. Promise. That I can promise you. I’m slow? I’m old? Come on, Dawg. You don’t even believe that.”

That brought the usually soft spoken Dawson back up.

“I’m going to prove that,” he said simply, turning the floor back over to Tarver.

“If that’s what you banking on, you’re in denial, homeboy,” Tarver said tauntingly.

“You know what’s going to go down that night,” Dawson responded. “You know.”

If this were pro wrestling, Tarver would have stolen the “Mr. Perfect” gimmick from Curt Hennig. But because he thinks so much of himself, he said to Dawson, “This is the fight of your life right now.”

They went back and forth with a “Yes, it is,” and a “No, it’s not” for a while until Tarver moved the topic along.

“You bluffing, dawg,” Tarver said to Dawson. “One thing about it, they got you hyped up like you are a lion.”

Dawson, naturally, wasn’t standing for that. Tarver could have told Dawson he thought Dawson would win the fight and Dawson wouldn’t have agreed, he was so riled up.

“Nobody ain’t gotten me hyped up,” Dawson said. “I hype myself up, man. I do it for me. I don’t do it for nobody. I do it for me.”

Tarver, realizing that he’d raised Dawson’s blood pressure, continued to taunt.

“You ain’t no big bad wolf,” Tarver said. “You understand me? So all that whopping you say, you can take that and shove it.”

Tarver scored a big victory in the pre-fight trash talking, as he usually does. But Dawson represents a different breed of opponent than C-listers like Danny Santiago and Elvir Muriqi he spent much of the least year feasting upon.

His constant yapping may have gotten into Dawson’s head.

But if it didn’t, Antonio Tarver has a big problem on his hands when that bell rings on Saturday night.