by David P. Greisman
He is the champion, the man who twice defeated Bernard Hopkins to fulfill all expectations imposed upon him in his role as middleweight heir apparent. And yet he finds himself criticized by commentators and fans, derided by radio hosts in his hometown and described as an acclaimed boxer who hasn’t necessarily earned his lofty position.
His opponent is an undefeated upstart, a knockout artist whose powerful right hand has taken him, in two fights this year, from prospect to contender, from contender to number one challenger. And though Jermain Taylor might not admit it, he and Kelly Pavlik have much in common.
Slightly more than two years ago, Taylor was on the fast track to title contention, a marketable, athletic prospect many saw, almost by default, as the inevitable successor to the 160-pound throne as soon as Bernard Hopkins retired, if not beforehand.
Since then, Taylor has fallen out of favor. His two victories over Hopkins, a split decision in July 2005 and a unanimous decision in December, were seen as controversial, as was his June 2006 draw with Winky Wright. But Hopkins and Wright were wily, skilled veterans, bound someday for Canastota – surely Taylor’s less-than-impressive performances could be excused, his ability to hold his own praised.
That changed.
Taylor took on Kassim Ouma and Cory Spinks, winning unanimously against the former and taking two out of three scorecards over the latter. Yet people saw him backed up by the smaller Ouma and ineffective against Spinks. This, they thought, was their middleweight champion?
Pavlik, meanwhile, was for a time off the radar, a Midwestern fighter who figured to be another Great White Hype. But his people were lining up the lower-tier fighters, and he was taking them out. Finally, he got his audition for the big time, a January bout against Jose Luis Zertuche on HBO’s “Boxing After Dark.” Pavlik knocked Zertuche cold, effectively breaking the ice.
Less than four months later, and Pavlik was fighting under a Taylor main event just as Taylor had once done under Hopkins. The wheels were in motion. Pavlik sent a message, stopping ballyhooed bomber Edison Miranda to nominate himself as the best middleweight challenger not currently fighting out of Europe. Taylor, in his win over Spinks, left many, including HBO color commentator Larry Merchant, asking for more, for Taylor to prove that his preeminence.
Taylor’s initial answer didn’t satisfy.
“If Kelly Pavlik is the best fighter out there for the most money, we’re going for Kelly Pavlik,” Taylor told Merchant after the Spinks fight, giving himself an out.
Somewhere, sometime, someone has since spoken to Taylor and let him know that it’s not about money, but pride.
“From a style standpoint, my last couple of fights were wrong for me, but they were fighters who stepped up to the plate," Taylor said in a Sept. 4 press release. "Kelly Pavlik is a fighter, just like me. He comes to fight, no running, no holding. It's about time. People are going to be surprised by what they see on Sept. 29. I'm expecting a lot of fireworks in the ring with Kelly Pavlik. This is my kind of fight.”
The criticism has stung. And the chorus has sung. The overwhelming majority wanted to see Taylor face Pavlik, and that’s exactly what they’ll get – the champion against his top challenger. Except both combatants seem intent on not only proving that he is better than the other, but on showing that the other was never that great to begin with. In essence, each believes his foe has been somewhat hyped for the picking.
“[W]hatever he does, I know I'm going to win,” Taylor said in the Sept. 4 press release. “Slug, box, it don't make no difference. The outcome will be the same. Miranda didn't have all the talent people thought he had. I knew he was just all mouth. I know Pavlik is strong, but I know I am stronger than him.”
“When you look beyond Miranda, and you ask anyone about Kelly Pavlik, there is no other career,” Emanuel Steward, Taylor’s trainer, said in HBO’s ‘Countdown to Taylor-Pavlik’ documentary. “He’s never fought a quality fighter.”
Pavlik, for his part, takes the criticism in stride.
“I feel I earned my way up to the top,” Pavlik said on a conference call last week. “I still have more to prove, but I'm not going to let them put me down. I'm number one for a reason. They just think I'm a slow white kid from the Midwest who comes straight ahead. They're going to be surprised. It just makes it sweeter when I win."
This won’t be the first time Taylor and Pavlik have met in the ring. The pair fought in the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, a bout Taylor would win en route to a berth in the 156-pound weight class and a bronze medal at the Sydney Olympic Games.
“It was a good fight,” Pavlik said in the HBO documentary. “I can’t say that I won the fight. I’m not going to sit there and say I got robbed. He was experienced. He was older. I learned a lot from that fight, and now I think the difference is I’m 25 years old. I’m grown, I have a lot of experience behind me.”
“Jermain won, and I think the same reason that he won then is why he’ll win this time,” Steward, who has predicted Taylor by knockout in the first six rounds, said in the documentary. “His greater speed, better natural coordination, and then another major factor: the quality of guys that he’s been fighting.”
That doesn’t mean Steward doesn’t see room for improvement in his charge.
“In the amateurs he was a brilliant boxer puncher who everybody respected because he boxed so fluidly,” Steward said in the documentary. “And recently as a professional fighter he’s gotten into this habit of just dropping his left hand, bending down real low, taking his height away, no more footwork at all.”
Pavlik, too, sees weaknesses in Taylor’s style that he can exploit.
“I can’t tell you what they are right now, because I don’t want to give him any ideas,” Pavlik said at a late-July press conference. “He has picked up some bad habits along the way, but he has not regressed.”
Those bad habits were especially apparent against the caliber and style of Taylor’s recent opponents. Now, after the different challenges brought by Hopkins, Wright, Ouma and Spinks, Taylor welcomes the kind of fight Pavlik brings to the table.
“I expect him to come forward and try to overpower me,” Taylor said at the press conference. “He will not run. He is not a southpaw. He is coming to fight. I know he hits hard, and I am going to be aggressive.”
“If he wants to come to fight, that is better for me,” Pavlik said. “This is a great fight for boxing.”
The 10 Count
1. And that’s if, fingers crossed, Taylor and Pavlik make it through this week unscathed.
The recent rash of injuries – which sidelined Fernando Vargas, Juan Manuel Marquez and Vitali Klitschko and either postponed or canceled fights involving them and others – struck again last week against two more major upcoming bouts.
First, word came in that Adrian Diaconu had been forced to pull out of his Sept. 29 mandatory challenge of light heavyweight titlist Chad Dawson after suffering a hand injury in training camp.
Diaconu injured his right hand Sept. 13 while sparring, pain between his knuckles and wrist that led to a Sept. 14 physician visit and a Sept. 17 MRI exam, according to a press release from Don King Productions. The exam found bone contusions on the base of his hand and soft tissue damage in the surrounding areas, the press release said.
Stepping in for Diaconu will be Epifanio Mendoza, a Colombian fighter who largely built his 28-4-1 (24) record at middleweight, where he knocked out then-undefeated prospects Tokunbo Olajide and Rubin Williams, both within the first minute of the first round.
2. Then, on Friday, heavyweight Oleg Maskaev’s long-delayed mandatory title defense against Samuel Peter – which had finally been scheduled for Oct. 6 – was put off once again when Maskaev suffered a back injury.
Maskaev first hurt his back about three weeks ago, further aggravating his injury while running Thursday, said Dennis Rappaport, Maskaev’s promoter, to ESPN.com scribe Dan Rafael. Maskaev also had a contusion on his right ankle, Rappaport said.
Maskaev underwent multiple MRI exams, which revealed a herniated disk and a bulging disk in the 38-year-old titlist’s back, Rappaport said.
Peter took a split decision over James Toney in September 2006 to become the mandatory challenger to Maskaev, who had recently stopped Hasim Rahman to win the World Boxing Council’s heavyweight belt. But the WBC called for a rematch between Peter and Toney, a bout Peter won in January by a wide unanimous decision. In the meantime, Maskaev was granted, and won, a voluntary December 2006 defense against unheralded opponent Peter Okhello.
Toward the end of January, Vitali Klitschko announced that he was coming out of retirement, raising the possibility that Peter would have to wait even longer for his shot due to Klitschko’s position as the WBC’s Champion Emeritus. Klitschko, in coming back, could immediately assert himself as the top challenger to the current beltholder, a privilege he was attempting to invoke.
After lengthy mediation and, of course, litigation, Maskaev-Peter was set for Oct. 6, 2007, more than 13 months after Peter initially won the right to challenge Maskaev.
“[O]n behalf of Samuel Peter, we will move for him to still fight for the title on Oct. 6,” Dino Duva, Peter’s promoter, told BoxingScene.com last week. “The way Samuel’s career has been delayed has been a disgrace. Delay after delay, and this is just another delay. We are fed up with this. Samuel deserves to be named champion or at least fight for the title. Something isn't right with all of these fighters scheduling fights and pulling out so often."
3. Diaconu and Maskaev weren’t the only fighters getting hurt last week – once-promising heavyweight prospect Audley Harrison was taken to a Florida hospital with non-life-threatening injuries suffered in a two-car accident, according to a statement on Harrison’s Web site.
Harrison, who was scheduled for a bout this Saturday against 5-18-1 designated opponent Paul King, has since been released from this hospital, but he nevertheless had to pull out of the King match due to head, wrist and shoulder injuries, the statement said.
“[M]y hand is so swollen and sore, I've been told by the doctor I'm out for four to six weeks,” Harrison said via his Web site. “I'm waiting for the results of the MRI scan to see if I've ruptured my pectoralis muscle in my chest, which is currently in a sling, but [I] hope to be back in the ring once I'm given the all clear to resume training.”
Harrison, who won boxing gold in the super heavyweight division at the 2000 Olympics, has since compiled a record of 21-3 with 16 knockouts. His last appearance was in February, a third-round knockout loss to Michael Sprott.
4. Floyd Mayweather, whose press tour for his Dec. 8 pay-per-view against Ricky Hatton has already kicked off, will receive some mainstream attention in the buildup to his welterweight championship defense.
Mayweather will be one of 12 semi-celebrities competing on the fifth season of ABC television show “Dancing with the Stars,” which premieres Monday, Sept. 24. Joining Mayweather are Melanie Brown, Sabrina Bryan, Helio Castroneves, Mark Cuban, Jennie Garth, Josie Maran, Cameron Mathison, Wayne Newton, Marie Osmond, Albert Reed and Jane Seymour.
Mayweather’s dance partner will be Karina Smirnoff, who in previous seasons finished in second place with Mario Lopez and in sixth place with Billy Ray Cyrus. Mayweather is the third boxer to appear on “Dancing with the Stars”; Evander Holyfield was in just three episodes in the show’s first season, while Laila Ali finished in third place last season.
5. Mayweather’s last opponent, Oscar De La Hoya, had a mixed week when it came to mainstream attention for himself.
Midweek, Michigan newspaper The Grand Rapids Press noted De La Hoya’s desire to fight on network television.
“I would love to do a tune-up fight on free TV,” De La Hoya told reporter David Mayo. “I would love it. It's something I’m really considering, because I've been doing all these big fights, and I take time off, whether it's a year, or two years, and I have to admit there's some rust to shake off. I think I deserve a tune-up fight.
“It's an idea I've had for many years, and maybe this is the perfect opportunity to approach the networks – with me," De La Hoya said. “I’m more than willing to fight on free TV because of what it would do for boxing.”
6. Any potential good exposure was quickly negated by, uh, too much exposure in the form of several photos posted on celebrity photo and video Web site X17online, each showing a person, purportedly De La Hoya, in various compromising poses and in outfits not necessarily designed for a “Golden Boy.”
“The photographs depicting Mr. De La Hoya's image that were posted online today by an obscure paparazzi Web site are fake,” Bertram Fields, De La Hoya’s lawyer, said in a statement issued to the media. “Many of the Web site's viewers (as reflected in postings on the site) identified the photos as a ‘really bad Photoshop job.’ Unfortunately, with today's technology, anyone can make any photo seem like something other than it is.”
7. Boxers Behaving Badly Update, part one: Hector Camacho Sr. had his sentence reduced last week for a November 2004 incident in which the former three-division titlist broke into a Mississippi computer store, according to the Associated Press.
Camacho had been sentenced in June to seven years in prison with all but one year suspended. Last week, though, Harrison County Circuit Judge Steve Simpson dropped Camacho’s penalty to time served, crediting him for the five months or so that Camacho had spent in jail while waiting both for the charges to be resolved and for a separate drug-possession case to begin. Simpson also sentenced Camacho to spend a year under house arrest and three years on probation.
According to Camacho’s attorney, the flamboyant fighter was attempting to retrieve a laptop he had recently purchased from the store and had left there to be fixed. But the store’s owners said Camacho fell through the ceiling, relieved himself inside and then stole several computers and thousands of dollars in checks and cash.
Camacho’s sentence initially permitted him to serve his time under house arrest in his native Puerto Rico, but that scenario was not viable because the territory wouldn’t handle his arrangements, the AP reported.
Camacho has another upcoming trial, set for Nov. 5, for alleged possession of the drug Ecstasy.
8. Boxers Behaving Badly Update, part two: Mike Tyson was scheduled, as of press time, to appear in court Monday for a hearing at which the former heavyweight champion could change his original not-guilty plea on charges of drug possession and driving under the influence of drugs, according to the Associated Press.
Tyson was arrested in late December in Scottsdale, Ariz., after his car nearly struck a sheriff’s vehicle. Tyson, who was leaving a nightclub, allegedly failed field sobriety tests, and he was charged with felony possession of cocaine after police said they found bags of the drug in his back pocket and in a pack of cigarettes in his car.
9. So, in the past 20 years, the two boxers who have truly transcended the sport and made it into mainstream awareness are Mike Tyson and Oscar De La Hoya. They became champions, superstars and millionaires. Tyson has since become a cautionary tale. De La Hoya and his team will now work, through publicity and legal channels, to make sure the “Golden Boy” doesn’t join “Iron Mike” as a punch line.
10. “The Contender” update: Episode three in this third season of Mark Burnett’s boxing reality series established conflicts between more contestants. First, the drama was introduced with David Banks, whose limited experience has the super middleweight prospect essentially learning on the job, and Paul Smith, an undefeated fighter who represented the United Kingdom on the recent “The Contender Challenge: UK vs. USA” tournament.
But this week’s bout ended up being former super middleweight title challenger Sam Soliman against prospect Max Alexander. And after five rounds of an ugly clash of styles that even the television show’s format of editing fights couldn’t fully cover up, Soliman came out on top with a unanimous decision victory. Soliman joins Jaidon Codrington in the ranks of fighters who have advanced to the second round.
Trainer Buddy McGirt’s gold team stays five strong: Banks, Codrington, Miguel Hernandez, Donny McCrary and Soliman. Three fighters remain on Pepe Correa’s blue team: Sakio Bika, Wayne Johnsen and Smith.
David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com