Showtime's much-maligned December 1 triple-header has actually gotten worse, as Danny Green has decided to tell Antonio Tarver and his team to take a hike, opting instead for a fight against WBA light heavyweight champ Stipe Drews in his native Australia on December 16.
Said Green, "Antonio Tarver never wanted to fight me. We have never received an official contract from these guys. How can you agree to fight someone without a contract being signed? We have made over fifty phone calls to them and left numerous messages and not once have they sent us a contract to finalize the deal. We have tried again and again and again and again to try to get in touch with Tarver's people and we have been treated with absolute contempt and disrespect."
This isn't surprising behavior from Team Tarver, and it doesn't surprise me that Tarver, still trying to rebuild his credibility, wouldn't want a fight with Green, who is a dangerous opponent for him. Danny Green's no joke.
Green went so far as to move his operations to the west coast of the States and fly in Eric Harding to spar with him, so this is sincerely unprofessional on Tarver's part. I'm saying this without having heard his side, yes, but what do you think his side is? "Who is Danny Green? I'm Antonio Tarver!"
There was a reason that none of the Showtime ads I saw mentioned who Tarver's opponent was, despite Green being credible.
In other news, there's yet another December 8 fight, as Arthur Abraham will defend his alphabet middleweight title against Wayne Elcock.