Inside the Game: Gym wars in Vegas, Taylor-Wright, Tarver-Hopkins and more...
By Jeff Mayweather (February 15, 2006)
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It has been a while since I came out with an edition of Inside the Game, but I have had a lot of boxing on my mind recently and decided to offer up my two cents on how life in Vegas is going, while also sizing up some of the match-ups coming our way in the near future.

At the Top Rank Gym you will always see some intense sparring. There is always something going on and I have seen plenty of gym wars and interesting sparring sessions. For the past two weeks I have been keeping my eye on Heavyweights Tye Fields and former WBO champion Herbie Hide going at it.

It’s funny because Tye Fields is damn near 7 feet tall and Hide seemed scared to death of him when they first got going. Hide was fighting on nerves alone and didn’t do too well early on. But sure enough Herbie began getting comfortable and he has been improving more and more each day, to the point where he is now handing it to Fields.

Hide is well undersized but he’s getting the best of Fields by out slicking him and using his boxing abilities. When the fighters do end up meeting in close, Herbie has begun to get the best of Fields in that area as well. It has me fully believing that Hide is the type of fighter who is more dangerous when he’s scared and nervous.

People out in Las Vegas are still looking forward to the Floyd Mayweather-Zab Judah fight on April 8th but you can tell the buzz is pretty much gone. Judah’s loss last month to Carlos Baldomir really dropped his stock and he is actually pretty fortunate that Floyd is still giving him a shot. Judah saw $3.5 million go out the window, but thanks to Floyd he may still get $1.5 million to tide him over.

Needless to say, everyone still feels that Floyd is going to take him to school. As April 8th gets closer I expect the buzz to grow.

The on-again off-again fight between Jermain Taylor and Winky Wright now seems to be on again for June 17th. Winky dropped Gary Shaw as his promoter and in turn picked Shaw up for one more fight. It looks like the purse will be split 55-45, with the champion Taylor getting the high end.

It’s actually a very interesting fight. Taylor has youth, size, strength, and hunger going for him while Wright is one of the games most solid pros and comes in with a great jab and an excellent cover-up defense. I think it will be tough, but I expect Winky’s boxing skills and overall professionalism to see him to a win. As talented as Jermain Taylor is I still feel he is a bit too amateurish in a lot of ways to try to figure out a guy like Wright.

I have heard rumors of a possible fight between Bernard Hopkins and Antonio Tarver. If this is the case then I feel Hopkins is making a very bad decision. To me this just looks like a terrible style match-up for Bernard for so many reasons.

First off, Hopkins hasn’t fought over 160 pounds for ages and I feel he will be uncomfortable at the new weight. Also, the fact that Tarver is a rangy, slick, southpaw could mean hell to Bernard. That’s just not a style he is used to. And last but not least, Tarver’s size could prove to be too much in this one. Bernard has never dealt with someone as big as Antonio and I think the difference would show. And please don’t tell me that Hopkins has fought a bigger guy in Roy Jones, because they were both Middleweights when they met thirteen years ago.

This is a match-up that spells trouble for Bernard and I could actually see him losing by knockout.

I think that both Shane Mosley and Fernando Vargas are past their primes, but I feel that Mosley will have more left when the two former champions meet on February 25th. I feel this is a fight where the winner could go on to bigger fights while the loser really needs to think about retiring from the sport.

With Fernando Vargas we had seen a fighter; under new trainer Danny Smith he has strayed from his roots and from what made him popular. I’m not saying Smith is a bad fit for Vargas, but at his best, Fernando threw a great variety of punches while keeping up the pressure. He was ferocious. Nowadays he has tried boxing more, almost in the mold of a Floyd Mayweather, and it just hasn’t worked for him because he isn’t Floyd.

I think Fernando will have to go back to his old style of fighting if he wants a chance to win this fight.

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