By Patrick Kehoe
World middleweight champion Jermain Taylor works at keeping things simple, matter of fact and down to basics. When he gets off track and finds himself over complicating his life in the ring, he eventually falls back on the jab or all out aggression as possible resolutions. In full flow, the staccato rhythms of his left jab preps the air for the right hand whistling in behind, with the left hook riveting into place his frontal assaults. With primed speed and committed strength, repetitions of basic patterns break down resistance. The classic Taylor approach completes itself with body to head flurries to punctuate rounds or cap off adrenaline injected tirades thrown to let opponents understand the futility of their ultimate cause. You might survive; but, you cannot win.
The champ let’s every opponent know that fighting “Bad Intentions” Taylor means you will suffer for your chance at victory tonight. William Joppy, Bernard Hopkins and yes, Winky Wright, felt the sting of losing or ambitions thwarted, and all of them promised Taylor was not the kind of fighter to stand up to them, not the man to stand in their place.
Though he relishes his Arkansas down-home time, an innocent kind of good natured frivolity, in his guise as a boxer he slips seamlessly into the role of a nonsense guy who wants to be as honest and open as he can; it’s just that for him, simplicity makes sense. One might almost say his low key, dispassionate southern respectfulness – yes sir, no sir – has a way of draining the melodrama out of his public appearances, as he tries to put things into a corrected balance.
Taylor would love to be all about the facts at issue, full stop.
Without condescension or scripts, Taylor highlights the key issues that make up championship boxing – threat assessment, monetary risk and tactics. Is Taylor asking us why indulge in negativity, when he feels so positively about his ring chances and his life in general? Probably. Apparently, Mr. Taylor doesn’t feel the need to be nasty or rude or belligerent. Imagine that. Attaining his best means he feels he’s fighting with an advantage, at least that’s part of the impression he’s giving us. His character directs him to only respond to verbal attacks aimed below the belt. As in the ring, he acquainted himself with marginal tactics during the heated exchanges with the master, Bernard Hopkins to give back in kind. Promoting the event, at the podium, Taylor took the moral high ground.
As champion, keeping it real keeps Taylor on message. I’m training hard, doing my job, which I love to do, getting better all the time, taking nothing and no one for granted, etc. He seems keenly aware that championship boxing means the short term dictates everything, yet you build yourself as if to last forever. It’s a maxim disguised as a contradiction in terms. Taylor tries not to miss the point of each day he works at becoming better, though he’s struggled to improve upon his Hopkins performances.
By telling the media that his next challenger, IBF jr. middleweight champion Cory Spinks, comes in fully loaded, a St. Louis guy with diverse skills and big fight experience, he’s readying himself for another test of his championship metal. Yet the understated refrain he states to restate conveys a core belief: he rules at middleweight. Indeed, respect takes its proper place, so he offers Spinks his just dues; nevertheless, the reality of Taylor’s status as champion underscores every laurel he tosses Wright, Ouma and Spinks. He must win to rule. The basic fact of his being a champion idles in the heart of the man.
Still, for all the sordid mentoring he endured while facing up to Hopkins on the stump twice within a six month period in 2005, Taylor often struggles to find the words that connect to and describe the conviction he feels for his status as champion. Taylor isn’t a great communicator. Honesty becoming him though it does. The Taylor message tends to get lost, run over by other fighters offering up more amplified, if empty threats. Still, contender Edison Miranda’s challenge to Taylor on YouTube.com becomes a self parody, for anyone who can look at the Taylor record objectively.
Taylor believes; Taylor knows he’s a champion. Yet Taylor, nearing 29, doesn’t project himself as inhabiting a role. Electronically projected by high definition data streaming he comes off pious and honest, though slightly diminished at having to fill the screen. Why can’t the simple fact of his dominance be enough? Why can’t the undefeated record tell the complete story? Isn’t that the essence of sporting data, the complete rendering of athletic performance?
Winning is a net result, the ultimate sports objective case, an end in itself. Correct?
Of course it isn’t. Boxing in our time is electronic streamed global entertainment product and fighters are the actors battling for the right to be recognized as a figure of martial superiority, right alongside comic book wrestlers and bikini clad ‘ultimate’ fighters as marketable commodities capable of providing spectacles of controlled violence as sporting warfare. He might wish to hold the world at arms length at times, but mostly he does this because he’s not a natural at acting the part of entertainer, his introspective shyness precluding it absolutely. For the purposes of boxing as entertainment, only spectator identification (Arturo Gatti), extreme ability (Roy Jones) and compounded winning (Lennox Lewis) ultimately matters for a champion. And it helps to be able to project characterization, more than the modernist idea of embodying it. Jermain Taylor wins; but, the background narrative of his life story and the significance of his accomplishments have diminished over time.
Winning the title at middleweight and defeating the legend of Bernard Hopkins came at the price of an unexpected mitigation: Taylor was seen as having barely won. Worse yet, Hopkins fans accused him of having been gifted a decision; hadn’t the kid faded in the caldron of the championship rounds? Controversy imprinted itself over the fact of the result. Credit was not given where credit was due. What boxing fans and cable broadcaster HBO wanted was an impacting moment of succession, cryptically violent, a generational overthrow creating a new champion brimming with youthful promise.
Hopkins is dead, long live Taylor.
And what boxing fans got was a cleaving of destinies, over lapping micro-controversies, partisan perceptions framed within a decent tussle, with the old lion dangerous to the bitter end. What lingers in the minds of boxing fans about Taylor was he claimed the rights as middleweight champion, but, the old king managed to survive. Hopkins even defied retirement besting Antonio Tarver at light-heavyweight defiling age and the dictates of time. Taylor has fought on, bravely, though with less grace and, what almost seems to some, more and more desperation. His technical flaws have become more pronounced and the arch of learning curve flattening despite Emanuel Steward’s teaching.
Being the best middleweight has proven to be a struggle, pure and simple. Yet, the wins continue to sustain his status of world champion. Winning, thought, without popular support, tends to eventually dampen the fighting spirit. So far Taylor has not become mired in recrimination or a sense of failed mission. He keeps to the pride of achievement as he measures it, popularity evading him all the while.
And that’s the real fight the eminently likeable Jermain Taylor now weighs in on to win, though he may not acknowledge that predicament, exactly. He’s the kind of man that tells us he’s just doing his job, feeding his family, doing the very best that he can with the god given talents at his disposable. Amen. Yet, he and his promoter Lou DiBella are scoping out the territorial imperatives, the high ground, with challenges coming in the form of super-middleweight superman Joe Calzaghe to name just one. The future will be as simple as Team Taylor chose to make it; the challenges continuing to mount – avenues financial and logistical compounding.
Will Taylor choose to fight off the coming challengers at middleweight in the persons of Edison Miranda and Kelly Pavlik – to name two – or fight historical match ups with Calzaghe and Roy Jones, perhaps? Philosophy and finances will make their own determinations. Be that as it may, Joe Calzaghe is coming over to watch Taylor turn aside the challenge of Cory Spinks and make transparent his desire to fight America’s best middleweight. So glory might come in the form of a still desperate Welshman; might not something akin to popularity be there to be won as well? The offer of a negotiable 4 million promissory dollars not quite matching the speculative 10 million Taylor’s tossed back into Calzaghe promoter Frank Warren’s corner. Seems the business of big time boxing is also all about hitting and not being hit.
Not that Taylor admits any of this speculating influences his immediate thinking. Money may be the bottom line for taking punches, yet, you have to fight off one threat at a time. And Taylor’s been adapt at understanding that in boxing, the future doesn’t really exist. Only now matters; only in the present can good things be achieved and terrible things averted.
Reducing action to essence, Emanuel Steward has been trying to keep Taylor from forgetting himself, as champion’s can. The primacy of the jab, the need to be a balanced, precise punching dangerous man, at all times alert to opportunity and danger equally, that is Steward’s vision of Taylor. Improve upon the Taylor who whittled down Hopkins and you have something special.
The eyes tell the story of his deep well of desire to be the very best. What other kind of man could possibly have bested the force of nature that was Bernard Hopkins? Having set a torrid pace that Hopkins frankly couldn’t match for two-thirds of their historic middleweight title fight July 16, 2005, Taylor’s dynamism began to fade. Lost in Hopkins’ cunning late flourishing, was Taylor’s gut check fight back, punching back blow for blow. His exhausted rebuttals proved to be a perfect storm meant to beat back the legendary bully or topple over trying.
That was Taylor at crunch time, the heir apparent, fatigued from his own efforts, facing up to the legend of Hopkins and instinctively going for broke, leaving nothing in the tank. Alas, such total commitment should have established a growing legacy. Taking the prized scalp of Hopkins demanded great heart.
Taylor’s directness to life looks for clear questions posed by writers or embattled opponents, for which he can offer honest answers. What you see is what you are likely to get from Jermain Taylor, paying back in kind, affronts and affection. You get the idea Taylor hates the very idea of going through the motions. No wonder he can relate to Steward’s work ethic based training regiment, a Kronk Gym tradition akin to his own.
As with his attitude toward Cory Spinks, Taylor’s instinct has always been to respect the other fighter and what ever skill set he might possess. As revolted as he was by the antics of Bernard Hopkins in full vitriolic rant, Taylor was always able to credit Hopkins for his life’s work, the technical mastery displayed over the full course of his championship reign. Indeed, professional would be a good word to describe how Jermain Taylor takes to doing the business of being a boxing champion.
If it were up to Mr. Taylor, championship fights would be all about in the ring performance on the day, one committed, charged figure trying to bring his skills and honor to bear upon another. You seriously get the feeling that in the mind of this particular middleweight he really does believe: let the better man win. And yes, there’s a kind of veiled heroism about the man from Little Rock, one not invented by the pen, nor manufactured by PR spin. He really does think that professional boxing comes down to skill, will, heart and a modest helping of good fortune.
Then again, seeing that good fortune normally takes the form of hard work’s bi-products, Mr. Taylor tends to busy himself with the business of committing to the task at hand, in the gym or deep into the championship rounds. Lately, he’s taking notes on Cory Spinks, a guy who looks to match his jab and work well at ring center.
When it comes to assessing Jermain Taylor – sporting his 26 wins and famous draw – the truth is right in front of you, pure and simple, closing fast.
Patrick Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net
