By Terence Dooley

It is a common theme in boxing; the young unbeaten kid takes on a wily old fighter with fading aspirations, the older man frustrates the kid and negates his style before the kid wins a tight decision then moves into title eligibility.

In the case of Jermain Taylor the order was all wrong and he found himself fighting a foe with fading ambition for the world-titles when he took on Bernard Hopkins last July and then defended his newly acquired (well the ones that did not become scattered) titles in an immediate rematch.  Twenty-four rounds of frustration saw Hopkins and Taylor annul one another to produce a pair of fights that could be described as either tactical or tedious.  Taylor emerged with the all-important ‘W’s’ and the undisputed middleweight title, a moniker now sullied by the fights between Taylor and Hopkins. 

So what does a young boy do?  Well in the case of Taylor he jumps straight into a fight with an older, wilier boxer - yet in Ronald ‘Winky’ Wright he faces a fighter who has some ambition left after years of waiting unwearyingly for his big shots. 

In fighting Wright, Taylor must surely hope to draw a line under those fights with Hopkins as well as legitimising his middleweight title – I say title and not titles because true to form the belts have become splintered at 160lbs, Taylor now holds the WBC and WBO versions of the belts.

So far it seems we need to credit Taylor for his belligerent attitude but surely the match with Wright has disaster written all over it?  If Taylor wins revisionists will rewrite Wright as a small man swimming out of his depth; if Taylor loses he will be declared a fast-fisted shoe-shining wunderkind who got a few fluky victories over a faded fighter. 

Well it is easy to look at the evidence on show versus Hopkins and say Taylor is a weaker fighter than Wright yet this does a disservice to Jermain.  Hopkins, for my money, is fragile against fast-handed, and more importantly ‘live’, opponents so he was always going to struggle with Taylor.  Couple this with the fact Hopkins had been taking the path of least resistance in recent bouts and it can be argued that Hopkins used all his experience to make Taylor look bad even if it meant he himself could not win the fights. 

The pre-Hopkins Jermain Taylor had shown great potential as well as precocious poise.  He is quick, has nice shot selection, can show off a mean body attack and has decent power.  Hopkins spent the majority of the fights with Taylor with his head down and constantly fouled Jermain in between the odd burst of punching so it is no wonder that these two fights do not fully signify the skills Taylor has at his disposal. 

On the other hand if Hopkins can make Taylor look bad in victory Winky Wright is skilled enough to make Taylor look bad and defeat him.  Wright is a strong southpaw who uses a traditional blocking and parrying defence to negate his nemesis, in fact the Wright defence can be best described as a shield; he tucks himself up and catches the shots coming his way on his arms, elbows and gloves.  It is a very hard guard to penetrate.  Wright is not a mover but then he has never had to move, he is a rarity in boxing as he can stand right in front of you and make you miss him. 

Another strength possessed by Wright is his southpaw jab and left-cross, both these shots come at you with a fair degree of speed and a large amount of accuracy.  Wright is not a fighter who wastes very many shots, if he throws a punch you can guarantee he saw a gap for it to be placed into. 

In his stand-out win over Felix Trinidad Wright did not do anything flash, perilous or fancy; he merely put up his barricades and allowed the one-dimensional Trinidad to come forward, and more importantly punch, in a straight line.  Doing this versus Wright is akin to boxing suicide and it was easy for Winky to shut Tito out and send him out to pasture.

So all in all it is a hard task for Taylor and if you have only seen him in those two fights with Hopkins you must be thinking of putting a large bet on Wright, I wouldn’t do that just yet though, lets have a look at what Taylor had pre-Hopkins and what he may have learned from his Championship fights.

Heralded from the get-go Taylor is a pleasing package of a fighter.  He is a perfect specimen for the TV age, high-speed, agile and with an appealing attitude.  Taylor immediately brought speediness to the pro ranks as well as efficient, if unpretentious, footwork coupled with, unusually for a former amateur star, a sophisticated body attack.  In his fights leading up to Hopkins, particularly versus Daniel Edouard, Taylor looked the heir apparent and only seemed to lack concussive one-shot power, there are no clean KO’s on his record thus far.

Taylor’s main staple is a fast jab, sometimes single and sometimes doubled, followed by a raking right hand and a fine left hook.  He will then usually go to the body.  Versus Hopkins he mostly relied on his jab and fast handed flurries to ensure he did not give Hopkins freedom to charge into him, it made for a spectacle most swiftly forgot.  However the results created a massive, albeit false and futile, furore amongst the fans who failed to see that Hopkins had a duty to defend his title, not steal another sparse victory.

So what does all this mean for this fight?  I’m going to nail my flag to the mast here and go for Taylor by KO, we must not forget how big Taylor is at the weight and that Wright has come from the junior division, in saying that I am not relying on size alone.

I know how good Wright is, I’m a huge fan of Winky, and if Taylor opts to stand at a distance and tries to out-jab Wright he will lose a snoozer.  Jabbing with a southpaw, especially one as good as Wright, would be suicide; Wright’s right jab is so educated it runs its own University in Florida.  What Taylor needs to do, and can do, is forget about out-jabbing Wright with his trusty left hand and time fast, sharp right hands over the jab of Wright.  This is eminently possible if Taylor gets his lead foot outside Wright’s, Winky is not a stereotypical southpaw mover and often allows the other guy to get into good scoring positions then puts up his screen and blocks the incoming fire.  If Taylor can shoot that right hand over the Wright jab he will have greater success than he’d get with the left hand and he’d open up space for his left hook off the right cross.

Taylor also can use his footwork to move around Wright in a rough and ready arc to ensure that he can spot chinks in the Wright ramparts, Jermain can then slip his fast shots through those gaps.  At first it will be a case of correctness and not clout from Taylor, the power can come when the Wright defence becomes ragged and if this does transpire I predict the bigger, stronger Taylor to confound his critics by scoring a knockout around the tenth round. 

In this fight, unlike the bouts with Hopkins, Taylor will get the time and freedom to express himself.  If Taylor instead opts to out-jab Wright it could be a frustrating, and ultimately defeat-tinged, night for the man from Arkansas.