Tweet
By William Dettloff (The Ring)
You almost can’t blame Winky Wright for thinking he had his fight against Jermain Taylor wrapped up going into the final couple of rounds on Saturday night. After all, he’d been pretty successful at doing what he does: putting up his gloves and blocking punches. He’d been doing it all night. He did it right up until the final bell.
The problem was blocking punches doesn’t get you points. Landing punches does—hard punches, especially. That’s what Taylor was doing, more or less, while Wright was wearing the earmuffs, and that’s why Wright didn’t walk out of the ring as the new middleweight champion.
Every generation has its great defensive fighters. Ours has been Wright, who was so incensed about the draw decision that he bolted from the ring so fast after the result was announced that you’d have thought it was on fire. Then, after telling Larry Merchant he wasn’t interested in a rematch, he boycotted the postfight press conference. Still blocking shots.
It wasn’t like Wright didn’t get any good business done. He did. Most of it came whenever Taylor inexplicably backed into a corner and permitted him to open up. Why Taylor did it repeatedly is anyone’s guess. He said afterward it was to lure Wright in so he could counter him, but after it didn’t work the first, oh, 14 or 15 times, why did he continue? Especially with Emanuel Steward telling him between rounds to stay the hell off the ropes?
At any rate, you could see throughout the middle rounds that Wright was deluding himself when after yet another round of blocking most of Taylor’s shots but doing nothing great himself offensively, he walked back to his corner with his hands raised high overhead.
It occurred to me after about the third or fourth consecutive round of this that he thought he was winning because he was blocking about 70 percent of Taylor’s punches. Winky: If 30 percent of Taylor’s shots get in, and they’re hard, and you land about nine punches and they’re, well, not so hard, who do you think the judges will think won that round?
That’s not the way fighters think. A fighter always thinks that if he’s successful doing what he does best, he wins. If a slugger chases a boxer all night, he thinks he won even if he never lands anything that big, because he was coming forward. If a great jabber jabs the bejesus out of a guy but doesn’t do anything else and loses a decision, he feels robbed because he outjabbed the other guy. And when a defensive genius is good at making the other guy miss—Taylor connected at just a 23 percent rate, according to CompuBox—he thinks he won. You can’t blame him, I guess. But sometimes he’s going to be wrong.
I know, the stats said Wright landed about 60 more punches than did Taylor. Big deal. I’d rather get hit with 60 clean shots by Wright than by 60 blocked or half-blocked shots by Taylor, many of which were hard enough to drive Wright’s own gloves against his head, which is almost as good as a landed punch, in my book. Still, it was Wright’s fight to lose over the last couple of rounds. He didn’t win it because he did what had gotten him there in the first place, and to him that should have been good enough. This time it wasn’t.
You almost can’t blame Winky Wright for thinking he had his fight against Jermain Taylor wrapped up going into the final couple of rounds on Saturday night. After all, he’d been pretty successful at doing what he does: putting up his gloves and blocking punches. He’d been doing it all night. He did it right up until the final bell.
The problem was blocking punches doesn’t get you points. Landing punches does—hard punches, especially. That’s what Taylor was doing, more or less, while Wright was wearing the earmuffs, and that’s why Wright didn’t walk out of the ring as the new middleweight champion.
Every generation has its great defensive fighters. Ours has been Wright, who was so incensed about the draw decision that he bolted from the ring so fast after the result was announced that you’d have thought it was on fire. Then, after telling Larry Merchant he wasn’t interested in a rematch, he boycotted the postfight press conference. Still blocking shots.
It wasn’t like Wright didn’t get any good business done. He did. Most of it came whenever Taylor inexplicably backed into a corner and permitted him to open up. Why Taylor did it repeatedly is anyone’s guess. He said afterward it was to lure Wright in so he could counter him, but after it didn’t work the first, oh, 14 or 15 times, why did he continue? Especially with Emanuel Steward telling him between rounds to stay the hell off the ropes?
At any rate, you could see throughout the middle rounds that Wright was deluding himself when after yet another round of blocking most of Taylor’s shots but doing nothing great himself offensively, he walked back to his corner with his hands raised high overhead.
It occurred to me after about the third or fourth consecutive round of this that he thought he was winning because he was blocking about 70 percent of Taylor’s punches. Winky: If 30 percent of Taylor’s shots get in, and they’re hard, and you land about nine punches and they’re, well, not so hard, who do you think the judges will think won that round?
That’s not the way fighters think. A fighter always thinks that if he’s successful doing what he does best, he wins. If a slugger chases a boxer all night, he thinks he won even if he never lands anything that big, because he was coming forward. If a great jabber jabs the bejesus out of a guy but doesn’t do anything else and loses a decision, he feels robbed because he outjabbed the other guy. And when a defensive genius is good at making the other guy miss—Taylor connected at just a 23 percent rate, according to CompuBox—he thinks he won. You can’t blame him, I guess. But sometimes he’s going to be wrong.
I know, the stats said Wright landed about 60 more punches than did Taylor. Big deal. I’d rather get hit with 60 clean shots by Wright than by 60 blocked or half-blocked shots by Taylor, many of which were hard enough to drive Wright’s own gloves against his head, which is almost as good as a landed punch, in my book. Still, it was Wright’s fight to lose over the last couple of rounds. He didn’t win it because he did what had gotten him there in the first place, and to him that should have been good enough. This time it wasn’t.
Comment