Dan Rafael over at ESPN.com has a story up currently regarding comments made by Tarver on a teleconference with media yesterday that he may have been drugged prior to his loss to Bernard Hopkins.
A few highlights from the teleconference:
"I have always been committed, dedicated and a hard worker. So when you look at those assets, then you have to say something else happened for me to fight so flat, so lifeless, so emotionless, so unspirited in one of the biggest fights of my career. Something definitely happened and something was terribly wrong."
Dan makes a good point at the end of his story that was the first thought to run through my head:
That substantial weight loss is what many have attributed to Tarver's poor performance.
Tarver did admit that he has no proof and that the post fight urinalysis showed nothing out of the ordinary.
The whole "I was drugged" angle is starting to get a little stale for me. If it is a genuine concern then be smarter. Taylor said that Hopkins' people may have gotten to his water before the fight or even into his room service orders but seriously...carry your own bottled water, don't accept water that is already opened and the only food you eat should be given to you by your own people.
Personally I just think Tarver was mentally wrong for the fight and he got schooled by a better boxer. Kind of like how win Wlad Klitschko claimed to have been drugged prior to his KO loss to Brewster that it was really that he had no strategy other than going for an early KO and he gassed and got caught flush.
As I wrote yesterday George Foreman claimed in his memoirs that he thinks he was drugged prior to his "Rumble In The Jungle" fight with Ali.