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Tavoris Cloud defends his IBF Light Heavyweight Title against Yusuf Mack on Saturday, June 25, 2011. Tavoris Cloud, the reigning International Boxing Federation Light Heavyweight Champion, stepped on the scale Friday evening in sunny, historic downtown St. Charles, Mo., and just as quickly stepped off.
Moments earlier, Cloud’s opponent on Saturday night, number-one contender Yusaf Mack (29-3-2 with 17 KOs), weighed in at a trim and ready 174 pounds. But Cloud (22-0 with 18 KOs) wasn’t so lucky. Despite looking chiseled, the undefeated champion was a quarter of a pound over the 175-pound limit. Cloud and his team quickly left platform as a buzz fell over the excited crowd. Four days before he is set to defend his IBF light heavyweight title on HBO, Tavoris Cloud got another reminder that winning a world championship doesn’t necessarily end your struggles.
As Cloud was awaiting his Saturday night title defense against Yusaf Mack as part of a Don King promoted triple header on HBO, he had a decision to make. “I’m washing my own clothes at a laundromat because I can’t afford to wash ‘em at the hotel,’’ Cloud said Tuesday from St. Louis, where the whir of a clothes dryer could be heard in the background as he spoke. “I can’t afford to pay a hotel $4.50 to wash a pair of drawers. Cloud wasn’t asking for sympathy when he announced that this was how he was spending his time. “All we get is constant refusals, refusals, refusals,’’ said Al Bonanni, who has been with Cloud since early in his professional career. “We’d love to fight Hopkins. Hell, we’d fight in Africa or Asia.
“Cloud will fight anybody but these guys know even if they beat my kid they’re going to get the sh*t kicked out of them. For the moment Cloud is young enough that he still has the time but he’s been waiting for the opportunity ever since he first beat former champion Julio Cesar Gonzalez three years ago in an IBF elimination fight that set up a shot at the then vacant title against former champion Clinton Woods.
Cloud had to wait 50 weeks to get that fight but he made good use of it, hammering out a decision by throwing more than 1,000 punches, a remarkable work rate for a light heavyweight. Cloud thought his high action fight with Johnson, in which he wobbled the former champion badly in the fifth round only to see him come back and make a tense give-and-take fight of it the rest of the night would lead to something bigger. I’m a world champion. Guys fighting me prepare like its Armageddon because they think I’m a guy they can beat.
Cloud’s story is an all-too familiar one. Cloud said. “I‘m a fighter, man. “It’s definitely not just about the fights. I don’t really want to wait but life’s a waiting game. It’s always the fights first.
It was the fights.
Current IBF Light Heavyweight titlist Tavoris Cloud (22-0, 18 KO) hasn’t had a moment like that yet. It’s always the fights first.
And Cloud makes damn good fights.
Matched with the mercurial and but typically Yusaf Mack (29-3-2, 17 KO) on the HBO-televised undercard of the Jr. Welterweight clash between Devon Alexander and Lucas Matthysse (a show also featuring a Heavyweight clash between Bermane Stiverne and Ray Austin), Cloud should make another this Saturday.
Cloud-Mack might just steal the show.
The last Cloud fight on HBO certainly did.
Cloud got by respected veteran Glen Johnson to score his first title defense, including a fifth round assault that saw Johnson hurt than he’d been in at least a decade. Cloud has fought once since. Cloud’s fight with Johnson created momentum, screamed to be capitalized on, and wasn’t.
Both of Cloud’s fights prior to Johnson played out to the same pattern. He earned a crack at the IBF belt by retiring former lineal World Light Heavyweight champion Julio Gonzalez in August 2008.
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