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When the middleweight title fight between Jermain Taylor and Winky Wright was first announced I had no doubt about the outcome: Wright, by decision.
As the fight draws closer I confess to having serious second thoughts.
Taylor has been working with trainer Emanuel Steward, who says we will see the champion sharper, punching harder and with improved combinations.
(Pat Burns, Taylor’s original trainer, brought him to the championship and engineered the two wins over Bernard Hopkins but Steward’s fine-tuning is, I believe, an asset to any fighter.)
Psychologically, Taylor must have been lifted by the easy win scored by Hopkins over Antonio Tarver on the weekend. This result makes Taylor look very good indeed seeing that he holds those two wins over Hopkins, debatable though they were.
Wright, meanwhile, struggled in his last fight with the awkward Sam Soliman although I am told he was weak after suffering from the flu and that at one point his team wanted to pull him out of the fight.
Still, the fact is that Wright looked highly beatable against Soliman while Taylor’s confidence level will be sky high.
This HBO-televised fight is intriguing to be sure.
Wright’s trainer, Dan Birmingham, sees the 34-year-old southpaw as being too seasoned and too much of a mature professional for Taylor to be able to handle.
“Taylor’s very methodical, very predictable, easy to train for, easy to devise a fight plan for,” Birmingham said from his gym in St. Petersburg, FL. “Even though he has Emanuel Steward it’s not going to matter, you can’t change a guy in a
couple of months.”
“Once he starts getting nailed, getting frustrated, he’s going to go right back to the old Jermain.
“Taylor’s got good hand speed, a good jab, he’s a strong kid, a determined kid, but he hasn’t been in a fight where he’s gonna get hit every five or 10 seconds so we’ll just see how he holds up. We’re gonna make this kid fight every second.”
Emanuel Steward sees things very differently. The legendary trainer, who devised the fight plan that had Wladimir Klitschko demolishing the southpaw Chris Byrd, said from his office in Detroit: “Jermain’s jab will be a big, big factor. We saw what Wladimir Klitschko did with Chris Byrd with the jab — the jab gave him so many problems he never saw the right hand he got hit with.
“Jermain is not going to come out and throw a million punches like some people think, that’s not Jermain’s style. You’ve got to develop a
style that’s within the normal style of your fighter. He’s going to be very much like Wladimir, very hard and precise punches — he’s a different fighter, believe me.”
I hope I am not being unfair to anyone when I say that, as I understand it, the original plan was for Pat Burns to continue to work with Taylor, with Steward coming on board as, in so many words, a technical adviser. Burns elected to stay home in Miami and Steward took over Taylor’s training full time.
Burns, speaking from Miami, chose not to go into details about the situation. “All I really want to say is that I wish Jermain all the best,” he said.
Asked for his opinion of Taylor’s fight with Wright he said: “I had already started our prep work [before the change in trainers]. I think this is a fight that Jermain should win easily if he’s prepared properly. I don’t think Jermain got the credit he should have received for the two wins over Hopkins. He beat a great, great fighter. I told everyone who called me that Hopkins would beat Tarver easily.”
Steward has had Taylor boxing with southpaws such as the Irish former amateur star Andy Lee, Ronald Hearns (son of the great Thomas Hearns) and unbeaten New Yorker Sechew Powell.
He said the sparring has often been intense and he has seen Taylor rising to a new level in the time he has been training him.
Steward feels that Wright’s method of walking forward with gloves up high and dictating a fight with the stiff, southpaw jab and high work rate is not going to work against Taylor. He believes that Taylor is going to be blasting Wright with the more telling shots whenever Winky tries to get his hands moving.
Additionally, Steward sees the 27-year-old Taylor as a big, powerful middleweight who is coming into his own as a mature, well-rounded fighter whereas he sees signs of wear and tear in Wright, who has been a professional boxer for almost 16 years.
Wright has the experience of many world title fights and wins over elite-level champions Felix “Tito” Trinidad and Sugar Shane Mosley but Trinidad was predictable and, in hindsight, not the fighter he used to be, while Mosley was the smaller man — and Sugar Shane gave Wright plenty of trouble in the rematch. Wright will not be able to enjoy the 12 rounds of target practice that he did against Trinidad, nor will he be able to impose the physical dominance of the Mosley fights, when he meets Taylor.
The undefeated Taylor forced Hopkins to show him respect — something that Tarver was never able to do on Saturday. The Olympic bronze medallist from Little Rock, AR, showed mental toughness when Hopkins made his closing drive in each of their two fights, punching back when under the sort of pressure he had never before had to face — and in the first meeting he also had to contend with a deep cut on the scalp that came from a clash of heads. Coming through those two fights and getting the decision each time was like a rite of passage for Taylor: We now know, after Saturday night, that he was not meeting a “shot” Hopkins.
I think we will see Taylor coming out in a positive and assertive way and looking to hit and hurt Wright early. I would not be surprised to see Taylor going to the body, ripping in the shots under Winky’s elbows. His jab and the straight right hand will be problems for Wright.
Taylor has youth and strength and he is the puncher in the fight. Wright is battle-hardened and technically sound and he can punch a bit himself. Although Wright’s last six wins were on points he busted Tito’s nose with a right jab and he hurt the solid-chinned Sam Soliman with the left hand in the 10th.
Needless to say it is imperative that Wright gets Taylor’s attention, and early, with his punches. Wright must get into the bout from the start and keep the punches coming, trying to maintain the sort of fast pace that might have the younger man getting confused and a little flustered.
One thing we are unlikely to see is Taylor getting tired late. Against Hopkins he was burning up a lot of nervous energy in the early rounds. The experience that Taylor gained from those two fights has surely been enormously beneficial to him.
Wright, meanwhile, faded disturbingly in the last two rounds against Sam Soliman although I think we can attribute this to the after-effects of his bout with influenza.
Still, I think that a lot of people see this as a passing-of-the-torch type of fight.
Wright opened as a -130 favourite in Las Vegas but money has been showing for Taylor, and the younger man — and defending champion — is now the clear favourite in the betting.
Having got one of last weekend’s two big fights completely wrong I must confess to feeling a little shell-shocked (though probably not as shell-shocked as Antonio Tarver) but an opinion has to be offered.
This is a fight that Taylor probably should win: an improving fighter with the physical and punching-power advantages against a long-serving campaigner who possibly may have peaked with the career-greatest win over Trinidad. It is also a fight that Wright can win if he is at the top of his form and can reproduce the boxing and fighting he showed against Tito Trinidad, which after all was only 13 months ago.
I will go against the rising tide of opinion favouring Taylor and pick Wright, with his ring knowledge and proven steadiness, to eke out a points win — but I must add the rider that if Winky starts getting hit and hurt early in the fight he will almost surely lose. Winky has to stop Taylor building up momentum. I think he can do it. If he cannot, he is in big trouble.
