Boxing Opinion: Jermain Taylor

As a fan of middleweight boxing, this writer feels it’s due time that we all began to question the validity of our current Undisputed World Middleweight Champion’s ascension. Before we go any further, you need to know that it was a bit hard to pen this piece as a former fan of Jermain “Bad Intentions” Taylor.

In the past, this writer has given the young Arkansas boxer chance after chance on top of more chances, in hopes that he would redeem himself of his recent questionable nature. He has yet to do so and the general consensus is that he most likely will not.

Again, as noted above, the words “former fan” apply best to this scribe, as many doubts have begun to arise regarding HBO’s most highly marketed, and arguably, disappointing titlists of recent years.

The situation regarding Taylor wasn’t always this dire. While Taylor was largely under the radar for the first part of his career, in 2002 he would begin to make some serious noise at 160 lb with an impressive string of knockout victories over some game opposition.

The run would begin with Johnny Rivera and stop with Nicolas Cervera only to be separated by a hard fought 12 rounder against Alfredo Cuevas.

The twelve rounder against Cuevas would be Taylor’s first legitimate bid for a title and Taylor would seal the deal quite convincingly. Taylor picked up the vacant WBC Continental Americas Middleweight title and would go on to defend the obscure strap for six matches, four of which he handled with another four run set of knockouts over Rogelio Martinez, Alex Rios, Alex Bunema, and Raul Marquez. Again, game opposition but none were established middleweight contenders.

In the wake of Oscar De La Hoya’s imminent retirement, HBO had been searching for the next PPV diamond in the rough and they had apparently found it in the young Olympian champ. He had the looks, the personality, and the charm to pick up the mantle of both the Golden Boy and the middleweight kingpin, Bernard Hopkins.

In December of 2004, in young Taylor’s twenty second fight, he would take on his tallest order in experience and his first true middleweight contender; former world champion and title holder William Joppy.

The fight would be the ugliest match of Taylor’s career to date. Whether you equate the horridity of the fight to Joppy’s lack of desire to trade with Taylor or the fact that Taylor never pressed the action enough to cut off the ring, it still appeared that Taylor had all of the tricks of the trade to be competitive with a full grown middleweight with abilities.

Personally, this writer clearly believed and still does to this day, that Joppy was a spent force ready for dispatching by the time that Taylor got to him. The fact that he couldn’t do so always bothered me. Taylor did try and seemed humbled by the fact that the knockout never came.

Many wrote it off as more Joppy’s desire to ride his bicycle for the duration than a lack of experience on Taylor’s part, but the writing was on the wall, it just seemed that no one wanted to read it, most likely out of a desire to see some new blood coursing through the veins of the corpse that Hopkins had turned the middleweight division into.

After dispatching Joppy, unconvincingly or not, talks would finally begin to circulate amongst boxing fans and promoters of a future match up between the long reigning king and the up and coming prince.

Two months after the Joppy debacle, HBO would stamp an exclamation mark on the prospects of a Hopkins vs. Taylor superfight by pairing the young champion against sparring partner Daniel Edouard on the undercard of the Philadelphia Executioner’s record breaking 20th title defense.

Hopkins would face the highly rated British middleweight champion Howard Eastman, whom at the time held the European, Commonwealth and British Middleweight titles.

The card took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California in front of a salivating pro-Taylor crowd. Hopkins would take the full twelve to easily outwork Eastman by way of a defensive first boxing lesson that left the crowd booing and hissing in disapproval.

Taylor would overshadow the then undisputed and unified world champion’s clinic with an impressive third round technical knockout victory over his former sparring partner in front of a jaw dropped crowd.

For the past two to three years of Taylor’s rise to the top, promoter Lou Dibella and HBO’s network commentators had been overjoyed with the progress of the young contender. The 2005 disposal of Edouard would further cement this their point of view and case for replacing the aging veteran Hopkins.

HBO commentators Larry Merchant and Jim Lampley had become young Taylor’s cheerleaders and were now seemingly infatuated over the possibilities that the Arkansas native with “Bad Intentions” appeared to be the only man on the planet with a shot at dethroning Hopkins.

For years, Merchant had seemed disgruntled in regards to anything pertaining to Hopkins. With the emergence of a new suitor on the scene, one began to feel that Hopkins’ demise was just around the corner. In the post fight interview of the Edouard match, viewers could see Merchant salivating over Taylor’s persona and performance.

The stage was set for Bernard Hopkins’ 21st title defense with Taylor playing the role of the spoiler. The fight would play out well for Taylor as Hopkins got off on his standard slow start of psychologically wearing down and feeling out his opponent. The process didn’t quite pan out for Bernard as it usually did, as Taylor held out for the better half of the fight.

The arguments over who won this fight still rage on to this day, but Taylor walked away with the decision, belts, and a severely bruised ego. Hopkins, along with most of his fans, left feeling robbed, dazed, and confused. The fight ended in a split decision in Taylor’s favor.

While Taylor backed Bernard up for the first six or seven rounds, Hopkins would establish his presence in the eighth and ninth to out land and out hustle Jermain down the stretch to no avail.

Hopkins’ long reign as the Undisputed Unified Middleweight Champion of the World was over and as HBO and Dibella began advertising, there was a “New Sheriff in Town”, one that would go on to try and establish order to the division with an unloaded gun.

The Taylor vs. Hopkins rematch would come off five months later with Taylor winning a more convincing unanimous decision, prompting Hopkins to retire. Taylor had finally done what no other man had done in nearly twelve years; he had beaten Hopkins and the rest is history.

Since his first “win” over Hopkins, Taylor has drawn with Winky Wright, unanimously decisioned Kassim Ouma, and coasted through the pitiful match against Cory Spinks. While he did his best to show out against Wright, this writer and many others feel that he lost the fight, as do a vast majority of the fans.

Taylor did little more than give a poor account of himself against the two junior middleweights that he was expected to dispatch quite easily. While Ouma was there for Taylor to hit, Spinks was not and many argue that Taylor did so very little to defend his WBC and WBO titles, that handing them down to Spinks might not have been such a bad thing.

It is becoming painfully obvious that Taylor has become quite complacent with his position as “HBO’s New Golden Boy”, so to speak. During basically every one of Taylor’s fights showcased on HBO it seems that the less Taylor does, the better, for him. Every match that he has competed in has been rife with controversy of some form or another.

For the first time in this fan’s life, Harold Lederman actually lost some of his credibility during Taylor’s last title defense against Spinks. Lederman, usually HBO’s straight shooter of the telecasts, gave two of the early rounds and basically all of rounds six and up to Jermain Taylor.

These were rounds in which Taylor rarely even thought about throwing more than seven or eight punches. At one point, around the fifth round, the fight mysteriously jumped out of Spinks’ hands for no reason on Lederman’s card to a draw. Very strange.

One watching had to wonder how this was possible considering that Taylor was hardly using his patented jab. Jermain was either unwilling or unable to do as instructed against the smaller man.

Many rounds were lost to the accurate peckings of Spinks, who simply glided around the ring jabbing and seemingly confusing the young champion. Oddly, Lederman refused to acknowledge this factor and kept scoring rounds in Taylor’s favor.

On the opposite end of the floor, Merchant and Lampley were practically outraged that Spinks wasn’t taking the fight to Taylor, that the cause of the “bore fest” laid to rest on Spink’s smaller shoulders.

Spinks was to blame alright, mainly for causing Taylor to miss and back peddle for the better part of the night while getting peppered with the same one two combination and lightening quick jab. Once again, in the eyes of the his network and promoters, it seems that Taylor can do no wrong.

Surprisingly, by the end of the night, things began to change.

The true sign that Taylor may have begun to run his course with some of his followers came from HBO commentator and die hard Taylor supporter, Larry Merchant.

Seemingly tired of the same old performances of Taylor, Merchant belligerently crawled the champion from head to toe with a “put up or shut up” style barrage of questioning over his pitiful showing against Spinks and Kelly Pavlik’s impressive domination of Edison Miranda.

Taylor’s answers were almost as gut wrenching as Larry’s apparent dissatisfaction. When asked whether or not he would face Pavlik and give the man the shot he so rightfully earned, Taylor answered “I’ll fight Pavlik if the money’s right. Wherever the money is is where I’ll go.”

Merchant looked as if he had swallowed a green fly. It didn’t take long for the internet buzz saw to kick in either. Basically every website with credibility worldwide began reporting on the travesty of the match and once again Taylor would fill the sting of disappointment from the boxing pundits around the globe.

Honestly, it’s easy to understand why fans and forums alike are in such an uproar. That’s not quite the answer one would expect from our Undisputed Middleweight Champion, especially considering that he so desperately wants and needs to prove himself to his supporters and critics alike.

“I’ll fight Pavlik if the money’s right.”

The obvious question among fans and commentators?

“Why not rush out to fight Pavlik to prove your worth as our champion?”

Miranda was largely considered to be the division’s knockout artist, the most exciting challenger to boot, and Kelly Pavlik utterly destroyed him in a show stopping performance.

Seeing that Miranda called out Taylor at the press conference and forced “the dawg in him” to furiously answer the challenge, you would think that Taylor would jump at the opportunity to match wills and skills with Pavlik.

Although Taylor did not rule out the chance of fighting Pavlik, he didn’t embrace it either.

What is a fan of Taylor’s to do? If Taylor won’t get up to fight the little guys, if he won’t get up to fight the legitimate contenders…what do you as a fan do? Do you stick with Taylor to the bitter end, like the loyal supporter that you are or do you jump ship, as many Miranda fans did, and gravitate over to Pavlik? Is Taylor ripe for the picking now that he seems to be swimming up stream in deep waters?

Maybe that’s too many questions to ask of you, as Taylor fans. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just the wrong questions to ask.

Maybe it’s time that you all started asking yourselves the one question that this writer and twice removed Taylor fan constantly asks himself on a daily basis in regards to HBO’s “Next Golden Boy.”

Quite simply…can HBO strike gold once again or are they just shoveling dirt? Only time will tell but the fans have seemingly spoken in regards to Taylor, now it’s time for him to prove us all wrong.