Taylor: Was His Fight Strategy Wrong For Pavlik?

By Jim Carran: For the second time in the past five months, undefeated World Boxing Organization/World Boxing Council middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (33-0, 29 KOs) has defeated Jermain Taylor (27-2-1, 17 KOs), this time by a unanimous 12-round decision at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Saturday night. Though the fight was ultimately scored closely, with Pavlik winning by the judges’ scores 116-112, 117-111 and 115-113, in reality it wasn’t a close fight in the least. Many of the rounds were close, but there was little doubt who was winning the rounds, as Pavlik 25, was the much busier fighter and the one that initiated almost every exchange.

I scored the fight 10 round to 2 for Pavlik, and I felt I was being very generous by giving Taylor the two rounds, because he was getting outlanded by a wide margin in every round. Taylor, 29, seemed to be fighting much more cautiously this time out, no doubt trying to conserve his energy so that he wouldn’t run out of gas again like last time and get stopped. It did help, in that Taylor was still standing in the end of the fight, but it didn’t help in terms of getting a win. I thought it was a mistake on his part, considering that when he fought all out the first time, he came within an eyelash of knocking Pavlik out in the 2nd round.

In most of the early rounds, however, Taylor, as usual, was the harder puncher of the two. The problem was, Taylor only sporadically throwing punches. I figured that Taylor, seeing that he was falling behind in the fight, would make some adjustments, and try to unload on Pavlik like last time. I figured wrong, for Taylor seemed stuck in gear, unable to make corrections to what was clearly not working, and not going to work. It was as if Taylor was conceding 2 1/2 minutes of every round to Pavlik, and then trying to beat him in the last 30 seconds. In the sixth round, Taylor let his hands go often in the round, and hit Pavlik with some huge right hands which caused his nose to bleed.

Instead of continuing in this direction in the following rounds, Taylor went back to his cautious approach, mostly looking for chances to counter-punch Pavlik. Maybe it would have worked if Pavlik had been fighting on the inside, but he wasn’t. Pavlik stood on the outside, throwing jabs and right crosses, which gave Taylor few chances to land effective counter punches. In a sense, Taylor was reduced to that of a potshot type fighter, kind of similar to Floyd Mayweather Jr., only without all the running and defensive work to avoid getting hit.

It was nice that Taylor chose to stand directly in front of Pavlik, but it was foolish to only throw jabs and infrequent right hands. From the 8th round on, Pavlik swept the rounds due to his superior work rate, and Taylor did nothing to turn the fight around. Even in the 12th, with Taylor obviously behind in the fight and in need of a knockout, he continued fighting in the crappy jab & counter technique.

Just bad strategy on his part, and kind of unawareness of what’s happening around him. Normally, a fighter, at good one, that is, understands when something isn’t working, and makes corrections to fix the problem. However, in Taylor’s case, he couldn’t or wouldn’t, and lost what could have been a winnable fight for him. Too bad, because this appears to be his last shot at Pavlik, whom I felt he could have beat if he had unloaded on his like last time for a round or two.