HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – Former champion boxer and Land O’ Lakes resident Antonio “Magic Man” Tarver is already in a heap of trouble in Hillsborough County for owing close to $800,000 in overdue child support for his 14-year-old daughter. Now, he’s been suspended from boxing and fined $50,000 in New Jersey for using performance enhancing drugs before a prize fight there last August.
Tarver won’t discuss his suspension with 8 On Your Side but posted a rant on YouTube last week claiming he’s innocent. “It’s a frame job,” Tarver said in the video. “I don’t know what or who’s behind this crap but all I know is I’m clean. I’m clean period.”
Tarver may have even more troubles related to why he signed a New Jersey boxing license application before the fight insisting he doesn’t owe any child support. Tarver didn’t want to discuss that either – other than to insist he thought the child support questions only applied to debts in New Jersey and not his mounting Florida obligations.READ MORE: Boxer Antonio “Magic Man” Tarver on the ropes with $750,000 child support debt
According to a blank application, New Jersey law says a boxer who owes child support debt can’t get a license – or will have the license suspended. A Tampa attorney representing Tarver’s ex-girlfriend Toni Rolle, who is the mother of Tarver’s 14-year-old daughter, insists he personally informed New Jersey boxing authorities about the debt a month before Tarver’s August 14, 2015 bout with Steve Cunningham.
“I contacted the board, got a hold of (New Jersey State Athletic Board General Counsel) Nick Lembo, had some correspondence with him about Mr. Tarver’s delinquent child support,” attorney Lawrence Hodz said. “I informed him it was well over $700,000 and asked him what the procedure was in New Jersey was to deal with this issue.”READ MORE: Mother of boxing champ Antonio “Magic Man” Tarver jumps into child support fight
Hodz showed us emails from Lembo deferring the matter to promoters apparently without taking any action on behalf of the New Jersey Athletic Board. A month later Tarver walked away with a $250,000 purse after fighting Cunningham to a draw in the same New Jersey bout that later landed him in trouble for doping.
“It leaves me feeling a bit discouraged,” Hodz said. “That it would be that easily put off by a state official knowing how much is owed to my client in unpaid child support.”
Lembo would not answer questions by email Wednesday regarding Tarver’s fight application and referred 8 On Your Side elsewhere to request public records from the athletic board.
According to his sworn testimony in a Hiillsborough child support hearing last month, Tarver ended up spending almost all of his prizefight money from the New Jersey bout on himself and his other debts.
He gave Rolle $12,500 over a period of four months toward his staggering child support debt, which now amounts to more than $779,000.
Hodz is waging a private court battle against Tarver on behalf of Rolle, but in the Florida Department of Revenue system there are almost 650,000 child support cases statewide. The state billed parents close to $2 billion last year and collected 81 percent of it. That still means about $360 million went unpaid to single parents who need money to feed, clothe and provide shelter for their kids.
More information about child support, and how to pay or receive it, is available here.
Hodz said his eight-year quest to collect child support from Tarver is a dismaying example of what other parents face in Florida’s child support enforcement system. “I think the message is if you want to get it you’re going to have to chase it down,” Hodz said.
For his own part, Tarver insists he’s a loving father who’s become the victim of a vindictive ex-girlfriend. “What does my daughter need with $6,000 a month? Are you kidding me?” Tarver asked. “There’s a lot of deadbeat fathers in the world, but I’m not one of them.”
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