Jermain Taylor: The Product of Politics, Not Skill

[ProBox1]

Jermain Taylor, since his first appearance on HBO, was slowly being groomed as the successor to Bernard Hopkins' middleweight throne. The promoter of Taylor, Lou DiBella, made sure that every opponent fed to Taylor had absolutely no chance of even coming close to beating him. Taylor's record is padded with blown up welterweights, junior middleweights and old middleweights. When examining the boxing records of several new stars in the sport, Taylor by far has the most padded record of them all.

Even the blown up welterweights and junior middleweights Taylor beat were old and way past their prime. Rather then face a serious challenge in Howard Eastman, Taylor lured a retired William Joppy to throw on his gloves for a battle. The opponent Taylor faced in order to showcase himself for a potential Hopkins bout was an old sparring partner who barely tried to win the bout. The guy took no risks in his career.

HBO, even more so then Lou DiBella, was banking so much on a Taylor win. The problem with HBO is their consistent push of the same old fighters. In the last 2 years, HBO has lost Oscar De La Hoya, Roy Jones, Arturo Gatti and Felix Trinidad. Their heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko is barely worth a mention these days and some of their other stars like Antonio Tarver and Winky Wright are already in their mid thirties. The only undefeated star quality fighter on their network is Floyd Mayweather Jr., Miguel Cotto is still several fights away from the top and their latest prodigy Kassim Ouma was defeated several days ago. While HBO has been losing stars left and right, their boxing rival Showtime, has been creating new stars. Showtime is home to young faces like Diego Corrales, Samuel Peter, Jeff Lacy, Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe. There is even a scouting program on Showtime called ShoBox, the program's sole purpose is to showcase rising stars and new faces in the sport. [details]

[marvdave]

Great stuff Doc!

as Antonio Tarver once said..."put down the Pom-Poms Jim"

[fight_fan]

excellent, excellent article...hit the nail squarely on the head.

[Stealthic]

I can agree that HBO was clearly pushing Taylor as the heir apparent, hell they even used those exact words, but to imply that one judge knew the fight was banking on his scorecard alone under pressure from HBO and "the industry" is pushing it a little too far. It was a close fight. The 12th was obviously a bad call on that card, but there was another card that had a couple rounds going to Hopkins that I think Taylor should have taken.

Frankly, I can see the fight as a draw, but I cannot fathom how someone would have Hopkins ahead when he was basically inactive throughout the first half. You can evade all the punches you want, but if you're not scoring punches, you're not winning the round.