Revisionist History-Jermain Taylor

[JakeNDaBox]

well yeah but he fought those 147-154 lbers at 160 too so using your faulty logic of calling them smaller guys when they weighed the same for the fight, than b-hop was a bigger guy b/c after the fight he jumped 2 divisions

also the ouma and spinks fight were after b-hop...he only fought real mw's before then and fought numerous fights above the 160 lb limit, was marquez not a real mw? was joppy not a real mw? your arguments are baseless

Wow this post is scary.

Marquez was not a real middleweight. He had one eye on retirement going into the Taylor fight and was a career junior middleweight (a battered one, at that).

Joppy was a middleweight, but hadn't fought in a year (when Bernard Hopkins beat the crap outta him) nor had he won a fight in more than two years. He fought Taylor accordingly, which is to say he didn't put up a fight at all.

He didn't face live MW opposition until he challenged for/was given the MW title. That's why people claim he was rushed - he went from facing garbage to facing the very best in the world (Hopkins 2x and Wright). I don't look at it as being rushed, more so than ridiculously protected on the way up and waiting for the most opportune time to challenge for the title.