By Terence Dooley

Middleweight Champion Jermain Taylor steps into this weekend's fight with Kelly Pavlik with a dark cloud of negativity hanging over his boxing career.  In the minds of many people this fight is already a foregone conclusion with Taylor destined to be on the end of a concussive beating from the forever-pumping fists of Youngstown’s Kelly Pavlik.

There is a clear sense that Taylor has ran out his string at middleweight.  That he has gone from contentiously unimpressive to unanimously poor.  There is also the perception that he is the modern-day version of the house fight: a network fighter, HBO’s golden boy. 

The people say Taylor has been living on borrowed time –sixty rounds of it – since he first burst into prominence against long reigning middleweight Champion Bernard Hopkins in 2005.

The sniping began almost immediately.  They said Taylor had been given a gift decision in victory and point to three or four rounds of Hopkins pressure as the evidence. 

Consequently Taylor’s coronation took place before a number of turned backs.  Question marks were placed over him right from the get-go and they were not removed in the rematch with Hopkins.

In dethroning Hopkins, who has since showed that age did not wither his skills, Taylor showed athleticism, speed and momentum. 

Now, three fights down the line from those fights, Taylor is a king besieged on all sides.  He is perceived as a phony king; a Macbeth sitting on a stolen crown whilst all the while being unable to show the aggression that won him his kingdom.

The cast was set for Jermain early on; like a kid who is given a first day-of-school label that he finds impossible to shake.

Yet the fact Taylor went on to defend against Winky Wright hinted at a level of spirit on the part of Taylor.  Most fighters take 30+ fights to reach the point where they take on a P4P fighter; they then take a break and wait a few years before daring to step in with another one.

In three fights, after only 23 fights prior to the Hopkins bout, Taylor stepped in with, arguably, two of the best P4P fighters in the world at that point; men who had longevity and pedigree.

Over 36 contentious rounds Taylor went 2-0-1 with Hopkins and Wright yet still this was not enough.  “Three robberies in a row” was the cry.

The Wright fight in particular is seen in differing ways.  One school of thought is that Taylor was schooled by Wright.  The punch stats are held up as evidence of this fact.

Another school of thought, supported by this writer, is that Wright’s guard was prised apart more often than is usually the case.  Taylor’s punching had an effect Wright when they fought, so much so that Wright looked sullen and beaten-up after the fight; he also wanted no part of a rematch.

In fact Taylor’s success with the right-hand lead in that fight somewhat hindered him as the ditching of his jab, a staple in his previous fights, left him looking less busy despite the fact he hit Wright more often than Wright had previously been used to.

This writer then felt that Taylor would spark life into his career with dominating wins against Kasim Ouma and Corey Spinks.  Unfortunately, in the Spinks dance in particular, Taylor had the weary look of a man who had sat down to a plate of beans for his past four meals and was facing a plate of beans once again.  Consequently the Spinks fight stank a little.

Spinks would run backwards during the referee’s instructions if this were allowed.  Taylor never quite got to grips with the puzzle before him as his career reached a spilt-decision nadir.

Now, though, Taylor is not facing a puzzle wrapped in an enigma hinted at by a shadow.  Taylor is taking on the latest human highlight reel in boxing.

For Taylor and Kelly Pavlik the recent boxing years have run on parallel lines.  Pavlik has been on the rowdy party train whilst Taylor has been forlornly sat on a train filled with boxing intellectuals.

Taylor has not been having a huge amount of fun lately.  He was distracted by the wily spoiling of Hopkins.  He made the mistake of drawing Wright’s sting too much along the ropes.  Ouma seemed to completely intimidate him with his recklessness (Taylor still refers to Ouma as “crazy”) and, finally, Spinks left him totally bemused and ridiculed.

For Pavlik it has been all gravy.  Lumpy gravy at times though.  In 2005 Pavlik was mixing shots with the tough and limited Fulgencio Zuniga.  In this fight a propensity for having a low right hand saw Pavlik floored by a left hook early and caught many a time by the swinging hooks of Zuniga.  It was wildly exciting stuff topped by the all-important stoppage win for Kelly.

Next up was a veteran former WBO title holder (at light-middleweight) in Bronco McKart.  Once again Kelly’s wall of fists fighting style lead him to victory as McKart was broken by the engine of the bigger man. 

In the fight itself, though, Bronco threaded shots through the wide-open guard of Pavlik.  Kelly boxes with a straight back, a wide guard and is constantly putting his next shot out.  McKart recognised this and produced a punch stat score well in the forties as well as a flash knockdown.  Now, stats do not mean everything as Pavlik, like Taylor against Wright, scored the harder blows plus scored another stoppage win to boot.

Further stoppage wins against Leonard Pierre and Jose Luis Zertuche pricked the ears of middleweight fans bored by the recent career of Taylor.  Those pricked ears were fully penetrated by the deafening sound and fury of the bout between Pavlik and Edison Miranda.

It was, in retrospect, a one-sided punchathon with Kelly always in control yet Kelly was doing what Taylor was not doing.  Pavlik was taking full-blooded shots before prevailing in an exciting fight.  Miranda had been picked out as the heir apparent but it was Pavlik who strode from that fight with the dead Champ walking Jermain Taylor in his sights.

Although it must be said that the limited skills of Miranda were given further limitations by his body’s inability to function at the middleweight limit.

Excitement can make people do strange things.  It prompted the elevation of Miranda to a level far outside off Edison’s reach.  Here was a fighter who was out boxed by a man with an excruciating jaw injury in Arthur Abraham in his only title shot.

Miranda also fought a war with perennial contender Howard Eastman, the same Howard Eastman who engages in aesthetically pleasing but ultimately fruitless and dull fights and is poor outside the European comfort zone he operated in.

Miranda’s form guide said overrated slugger.  To beat an overrated slugger you step inside the swing of their slugs and Pavlik did this with an ease that belies his rangy style yet Pavlik is Diego Corrales rangy.  Here is a guy who could box at range but who, admirably, wants to get right into the pit and start digging.  Kelly did not just beat Miranda he made a seven-rounds statement that has lead people into believing he is the man to beat Taylor.

Pavlik has had highlight moments against Zuniga, McKart, Zertuche and Miranda – all victories.

Taylor has had a torrid time in fights against Hopkins, Wright, Ouma and Spinks – points victories and a draw. 

Zuniga, McKart, Zertuche and Miranda.  Hopkins, Wright, Ouma and Spinks.  One man has been singing difficult solos and the other man has been a voice in the choir; the second batch of names being far more accomplished than the first.

Exciting fighters like Pavlik bring the excitement because they are always putting out shots and, therefore, are always open to taking them.  Straight back, chin up, guard wide and pressing forward: Pavlik is there for Taylor to hit and this will be a luxury for Taylor.  It might be one he takes too with abandon.

The assumption is that Pavlik’s toughness will blow Taylor aside as Jermain’s whole act is exposed, a spoiled network fighter finally meeting a true warrior.  I do not see it that way.

Taylor has skills; that is why he breezed though his contender fights without taking too many shots. 

His highlight reel includes the jab that put Nicolas Cervera over, the left hook that opened-up Daniel Edouard for a right hand assault (a decent win when you consider the fact Edouard had come through a war with the dangerous Willie Gibbs and, for a lack of application of his boxing strategy, could have offered Eromosele Albert a tougher fight) and the other massacres in which he took few shots.

Taylor also has toughness; this is not the sole preserve of Kelly in this fight.  Taylor’s father walked out on the family when Taylor was a small child.  Jermain then had to watch his mother leave their home every night to go to work leaving Jermain as the man of the house.  Taylor washed dishes and looked after his three sisters whilst also looking enviously out of the window at the carefree play of his friends.

That life lived must have engendered some kind of will to win.  It is this will that will see Taylor through, allied as it is to greater skill and boxing technique, hence the lack of clean punches taken in his career. 

As an amateur and now as a professional both men have taken different train; Taylor the A-train and Pavlik the B-line.  Both have mixed successfully yet both have mixed in different classes. 

Jermain’s demeanour, his style, his victories and even his demons in the form of his childhood stutter have been brought before us for ridicule as this fight approaches.  If Taylor is any kind of a man, and he must be to get so far, then he must decide once and for all if he is truly a boxer.  That boxing is his whole being and not just something he dabbles in to put food on the table. 

Taylor can, when at his best, show an educated and stinging double left jab as well as a booming right and a tight left hook counter.  Pavlik should be meat and drink for these shots and it could be the case that Taylor lands straight shots as Pavlik moves in as well as landing body shots inside.
 
Taylor also knows how to hold and spoil; this may frustrate Pavlik’s attack.  As long as Jermain does it in the style of Lennox Lewis as opposed to John Ruiz the win will gloss over this factor.

Conditioning will also be a factor and for the first time Manny Steward has isolated his charge in the Poconos resort, a place where he has honed many a fighter.  The solitude will focus Taylor, the intense training will give him fitness and the fact Manny has never led a fighter to defeat when training him out of that resort will be a welcome boost.

It could be that the steel that brought Taylor to where he is now is gone; in Pavlik he faces a man who knows what happens when steel is exhausted.  You fall into ruination, drift and decay.  If this is the case Taylor will get the beating people think is coming his way.  I doubt that; somewhere inside Taylor there is a burning will to win and it will come to the fore this Saturday in a tense, possibly tactical and occasionally blistering fight.