by David P. Greisman

Jermain Taylor, having defeated longtime great Bernard Hopkins on two consecutive occasions, is the undisputed middleweight champion.

He is a champion of circumstance, a hero of happenstance, a man whose career has been advanced by favorable promoting by Lou DiBella and the suits at HBO, as well as by his amiable personality and admirable pedigree.

For his first twenty fights, Taylor preyed on undersized, lesser talented lambs, victims in preparation of his future coronation, a destiny that seemed certainty as time passed, as Hopkins aged and his planned retirement approached.

The 2000 Olympic bronze medalist stepped up his opposition in the summer of 2004, stopping former junior middleweight Raul Marquez – who subsequently retired – and then wrapping up the year with a shutout of William Joppy – who should’ve retired after the beating Hopkins had given him twelve months prior.

The gears were in motion, with a February card being arranged to set up a collision course. Taylor trounced fall guy Daniel Edouard, while Hopkins bored it out against legitimate contender Howard Eastman.

Taylor had been given the title of heir apparent, the man who would carry the torch into the future, whether or not he won or lost against Hopkins, the future Hall-of-Famer, in the grizzled veteran’s twenty-first title defense.

July’s controversy has been documented, discussed and debated so often that it should have its own Zapruder film, but one message clearly surfaces: despite pulling out the victory, Jermain Taylor did not look good.

In need of a clear, decisive win to cement his identity, Taylor’s rematch with Hopkins was twelve rounds more of the same – the same tentative performance, the same mechanical and mental flaws, the same unanimous decision going his way while a majority of informed observers filled their cards out in favor of the forty-year-old.

It is infuriating to many that these two men are seen as the cream of the crop, while spending twenty-four rounds – on which fans spent one hundred dollars – feinting more than fighting.

Taylor keeps his left hand low, a defect that left him wide open to right hand leads from Hopkins, the same punch that repeatedly hurt Jermain in July, and again was landed at will in December.

Additionally, his oft-celebrated jab is one-half of the “bow and arrow,” a mistake in which, while extending his left, Taylor pulls back his right arm, exposing him to counters. And when he jabs in multiples, he shuffles his feet too far forward, setting him up off balance, on top of his ducking target.

Yet Hopkins was unable to take advantage of these weaknesses visibly enough to convince the three judges – the only witnesses whose opinions influence the outcome – to score a majority of the rounds for him. “The Executioner” no longer dissects until his opponents’ will to retaliate dissolves, instead opting to hunt and peck, in the hope that a message will be sent.

In February, Eastman would begin as the aggressor, coming forward and attempting to solve the puzzle that is Hopkins’ defense, only to be countered on the rare occasion he attempted offense. As a consequence, Eastman would allow Hopkins to more overtly dictate the latter half of the fight, during which Bernard would land lead left hooks at will.

The Taylor-Hopkins fights were similar to Hopkins-Eastman, in such an almost eerie parallel that if the three matches were watched together, October’s Chris Byrd-DaVarryl Williamson snoozefest would have competition for best sleep inducer.

This weekend, as well as in July, Taylor would take the lead at the beginning, searching, waiting for the right time to launch his artillery, a moment that rarely came. Instead, he went into counter mode, letting Hopkins practice his dark science, experimenting with hand and head movements until Taylor was set up for a right hand lead. Hopkins would rarely put together combinations, opting for one punch at a time and hence further limiting openings for Taylor to try and exploit.

Once again, though, Hopkins’ choice to fly economy meant less-than first-class results, and despite once again exposing that Taylor is unable or unwilling to bring the fight when his foe is a live dog, the decision went to the Arkansas native with more title defenses in his future, as opposed to the Philadelphian whose pedigree is his past.

In the meantime, Taylor will try to do as much holding onto the title as he did holding onto Hopkins, biding his time until he either is dethroned by any of a number of middleweight contenders, or he fulfills the promise that earned him favorable treatment and a title shot.

For while Taylor was put on the fast track to a pay-per-view payday, men like Kingsley Ikeke and Felix Sturm have toiled in relative obscurity, waiting for fame and fortune, and while Ikeke will contend on Dec. 10 against Arthur Abraham for the vacated IBF trinket, the road to future stardom currently runs through the man holding the other straps.

If the version of Taylor that eked out controversial decisions over Hopkins is representative of a truth that overshadows the previous hype, then “Bad Intentions” should have no intentions of meeting Winky Wright, a truly talented jabber and prime ring scientist at whose hands Jermain would look unimpressive, underwhelming and undeserving.

The 10 Count

1.  Winky Wright, though, needs to shine first in his Dec. 10 bout with Sam Soliman, an audition in which Wright must dominate and entertain in such a manner that people will clamor for him to receive a shot at Taylor as soon as possible. The concern of many is that Wright-Soliman will be boring, as it pits together two boxers lacking in knockout power. Wright is thirty-four, and has said in interviews that he does not plan to fight much longer, preferring the big matches and the big bucks after a lengthy career of being avoided. For Taylor to take a chance at being embarrassed by Wright, he will need to envision the cliché, that it must make dollars for it to make sense.

2.  Is it just me, or does it seem that if Jim Lampley worked for CompuBox, every Jermain Taylor punch would be counted as having landed?

3.  Considering the expectations leading into the unification match between junior featherweights Oscar Larios and Israel Vazquez, the bout ended up as a letdown, with a partially satisfying conclusion.

Before the fight had even begun, Larios had given up his shot at adding Vazquez’s IBF title to his own WBC belt, thanks to an enormous addition of weight between the initial weigh-in and fight time. Yet once the bell rang, the two began the rubber match to their trilogy where they had previously left off, coming out firing. Vazquez put Larios on his seat, a parallel to the first (and only) round of their initial battle, but Larios got back up and held his own for the remainder of the stanza.  Having tasted his opponent’s power shots, Larios went into boxing mode, doing so intelligently and successfully until the third round. In that heat, Vazquez threw a right hand that scraped Larios with the inside of his glove, cutting open a gash of proportions unseen since Vitali Klitschko against Lennox Lewis. Referee Tony Weeks rightly called time, and the ring doctor properly halted the bout.

This had been a match-up that many had predicted would be one of the best fights of the year, especially considering that in the middle episode of the trilogy, two thousand punches had been launched. Despite the early technical stoppage, observers can take consolation in the belts being unified, perhaps allowing Vazquez to set his sights on the other 122-lb. beltholders, and for Larios to finally make the jump to featherweight. If Vazquez and Larios decide to fight for a fourth time, however, I doubt many will complain.

4.  If the Vazquez-Larios fight was stopped at just the right time, then the stoppage of Ike Quartey’s pummeling of Carlos Bojorquez came three-and-a-half rounds too late. Bojorquez was game, an opponent that came forward and threw punches, but that was a recipe for disaster against Quartey, a former champion with heavy hands but no one-shot knockout power.

Bojorquez’s corner should have called it a night after the sixth, with their guy severely outclassed, his activity dwindling and Quartey becoming stronger and more accurate. The referee, Joe Cortez, did plenty to convince them to throw in the towel, calling in multiple ring doctors to check out Bojorquez’s cuts, admonishing his corner for the punishment he was taking and watching dutifully for a wobble or knockdown that would show that he was in danger. Unfortunately, in boxing a fighter can be in dire straits without overt symptoms, and in the wake of the Leavander Johnson tragedy, athletic commissions need to take a close look at writing rules that give referees more liberty to stop one-sided beatings.

5.  Sergei Dzindziruk defeated Daniel Santos on Saturday, usurping Santos’ WBO junior middleweight title and perhaps throwing a wrench into Don King’s planned tournament for the 154-lb. division. Santos may have been hampered by inactivity, having not fought since a technical decision over Antonio Margarito in September of last year. Since then, he had at least one fight called off, and was forced to travel to Germany to defend in hostile territory. Dzindziruk breaks up King’s monopoly on the weight class, belonging to the Universum stable while the other beltholders – Roman Karmazin, Ricardo Mayorga and Alejandro Garcia – are King’s men. Whether or not King has options on Dzindziruk, he would be wise to schedule a match between Dzindziruk and Karmazin, a battle between a Ukrainian and a Russian, respectively, that could pack in the crowds if promoted properly.

6.  Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo will finish their trilogy in February, wrapping up a series of clashes between two warriors, three fights in nine months. With Corrales-Castillo III on the schedule, Showtime’s first quarter of 2006 is looking to be a hit, with this rubber match bookended by cruiserweights Jean-Marc Mormeck and O’Neil Bell in January, and Jeff Lacy-Joe Calzaghe in March. Considering the danger, in boxing, of counting the proverbial chickens before they’ve hatched, one must hope that no training injuries occur, and that Corrales and Castillo can finally settle the score without accompanying controversy.

7.  Which name doesn’t fit: Manny Pacquiao, Vivian Harris, Winky Wright, or Jeff Lacy? If you picked Harris, you’d be correct, but promoter Gary Shaw has signed the former junior welterweight titlist into a stable of dynamic and popular performers. Harris, after being upset in a June knockout loss to Carlos Maussa, had been dropped by Main Events and appeared to be in limbo, having already been avoided previously, but now being left without a belt and its accompanying leverage.

But in Pacquiao, Wright and Lacy, Shaw promotes three of the top names in their respective divisions, a situation that can allow Harris to fight on undercards in an attempt to rebuild his career, an arduous task considering the embarrassing effort he carried out in what was supposed to be a showcase fight on a pay-per-view broadcast.

8.  I wish that R. Kelly had remained “Trapped in the Closet,” if only so that he’d have been prevented from butchering “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Whose underage daughter did the crooner urinate on to get that gig?

9.  Edwin Valero, a highly touted lightweight phenomenon banned from fighting in the United States due to a revelation that he had undergone surgery for a head injury following a motorcycle accident, is penciled in to appear on a Dec. 5 card in France against the always dangerous TBA. With fights, since his ban, in Argentina, Panama, Venezuela, Japan and now France, perhaps Valero is attempting to build up enough frequent flyer miles to purchase a return to America.

10.  For the folks at Fox Sports Net, this December will not be equated with a joyous holiday spirit. In a continuing chronicle of calamity, a card that had been set for broadcast on The Best Damn Sports Show Period has been canceled. Originally scheduled for the first, the airing, which was to have included James Toney against Rob Calloway, as well as Juan Diaz defending versus Lakva Sim, was delayed by two weeks. Then Toney dropped out, leaving the still-promising Diaz-Sim as the headlining bout. Sim suffered a cut in training, though, causing the powers-that-be to go into scramble mode. As a replacement, Glencoffe Johnson was ready to face a keep-busy opponent, while Andre Ward would have opened the show by opening himself up for more opportunities for critical derision. The fights were unable to be set, though, hence the cancellation, and a probable New Year’s resolution from the FSN folks that they will have better luck next year.