Bernard Fernandez | Sweet science acquiring sour-grapes mentality

IT'S NOW official. Any fighter who loses a bout he was supposed to win, even if it took place 25 or 30 years ago, now can claim that he was drugged or poisoned. And even if that wasn't the case, well, then his victorious opponent must have been supercharged with a performance-enhancing substance.

Such is the climate of suspicion that has permeated the entire world of sports in the steroids era. It's not just about Barry Bonds' suspected chemically enhanced home-run totals anymore.

The latest conspiracy theorist is light-heavyweight Antonio Tarver, last seen in the ring (if you don't count his role as Mason "The Line'' Dixon in "Rocky Balboa'') getting tuned up by longtime former middleweight champion Bernard "The Executioner'' Hopkins last June 10 in Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall.

Tarver (24-4, 18 KOs), who takes on Elvir Muriqi (34-3, 21 KOs) in the Showtime-televised main event Saturday in Hartford, Conn., now says he believes he was drugged before the fight with Hopkins.

"I was so lifeless, so emotionless, so unspirited in one of the biggest fights of my career,'' Tarver said. "Something definitely happened, and something was definitely wrong.''

Tarver's assertion - he can offer no proof to back it up - comes on the heels of George Foreman's incendiary claim that he was drugged for his legendary, Oct. 30, 1974, "Rumble in the Jungle'' with Muhammad Ali, in which Ali reclaimed the heavyweight championship on an eighth-round knockout.

It should be noted that Tarver and Foreman aren't the first fighters to suggest they could not have been beaten because their opponents were simply better on a given night. Wladimir Klitschko, upon losing his bid for the vacant WBO heavyweight title to underdog Lamon Brewster on a fifth-round stoppage on April 10, 2004, also groused that he "must have'' been poisoned. How else to explain his fast fade after a strong start?

The flip side of this increasingly familiar story is Aaron Pryor, who defended his WBA super- lightweight championship with a rousing, 14th-round TKO of another splendid fighter, Alexis Arguello, on Nov. 12, 1982, in Miami.

After the 13th round, Pryor's trainer, Panama Lewis, was heard saying, "Give me the other [water] bottle, the one I mixed, the black one.''

What was in the infamous black bottle? Lewis has said it was peppermint schnapps mixed with water, a concoction to soothe an upset stomach, but no one knows for sure. Pryor's fondness for cocaine already was public knowledge. The bottle disappeared after the fight, and no drug test was administered.

All this excuse-making seems to me to be a poison of another sort, the kind quaffed down by any number of sore losers throughout the years.

It tastes like more like sour grapes than peppermint schnapps.

"Can you believe that bleep?'' Hopkins said of Tarver's allegations. "To me, that's a slap in the fact of Larry Hazzard [the executive director of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board]. Everything was done by the book.''

It's a funny thing about those "overnight sensations.'' More often than not, they're late bloomers who finally get their turn in the spotlight and are sufficiently prepared to make the most of it.

That's what happened with Kelly Pavlik (31-0, 28 KOs), who transformed himself into the hottest property in the middleweight division when he scored an electrifying, seventh-round technical knockout of Edison Miranda (28-2, 24 KOs) on May 19 in Memphis, Tenn., the lead-in to WBC middleweight champ Jermain Taylor's stultifyingly boring split decision over Cory Spinks.

Top Rank founder and chairman Bob Arum, who promotes both Pavlik and Southwest Philadelphia junior middleweight Anthony "The Messenger'' Thompson, believes the same scenario could play out when Thompson (23-1, 17 KOs) takes on Yuri Foreman (22-0, 8 KOs) in one of the pay-per-view preliminaries leading up to the Miguel Cotto-Zab Judah main event Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.

"I still think he's a major talent,'' Arum said of the 25-year-old Thompson. "He came to us around the same time Kelly Pavlik came to us. Some guys stumble a little bit, some just take off.

"But do you keep the faith in guys you believe in? It cracks me up when people say that Pavlik is an overnight sensation. Yeah, he's an overnight sensation after 7 years.

"After this fight, if Anthony wins, we're going to put him on another big card. I really expect that before the end of next year he'll be fighting for a world title.''

Exciting Filipino junior lightweight Manny Pacquiao, off the strength of his two stoppages of Erik Morales and a points nod over Oscar Larios, will receive the Edward Neil Award as 2006's Fighter of the Year at the 82nd annual Boxing Writers Association of America Awards Dinner Friday night in New York . . . Welterweight Ivan Robinson (32-10-2, 12 KOs) and Darrien Ford (10-15, 4 KOs) square off in the six-round main event of promoter Greg Robinson's eight-bout card Friday night at the National Guard Armory in Northeast Philly. Ford, from New Orleans, comes in with an eight-bout losing streak. Nicetown native Robinson, 36, probably needs to win and look good here if he is to convince himself there's still a reason to continue his career. *

Send e-mail to fernanb@phillynews.com.