Should Jermain Taylor Retire?

By Sean McDaniel: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (28-3-1, 17 KOs) gave it his all last Saturday night against WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (25-0, 20 KOs), but in the end, Taylor once again ran out of energy and was knocked out in the 12th. The question now is whether Taylor should retire or continue fighting on with his career, and perhaps stay on as a gatekeeper for the young lions in the super middleweight division to sharpen their claws on.

At 30-years-old, Taylor has already accomplished a lot, made a nice fortune himself and probably doesn’t really need to continue his boxing career any further. No doubt, Taylor is still one of the biggest names in the sport and is capable of putting on a fine performance for six or so rounds, possibly 12 under the fight circumstances against a more passive opponent. However, facts don’t lie.

Taylor has now lost three out of his last four fights, two of them by knockout. His only win during this period was a 12-round decision over Jeff Lacy, who hurt Taylor in the fight. Lacy is another fighter that hasn’t looked his best in recent years, although he’s at least still winning most of the time, albeit against much lesser competition than what Taylor has been facing in the past couple of years.

In looking at Taylor’s fights, it seems easy to point out that he has a major problem with his stamina. That is, Taylor has had a problem dating back several years in which he runs out of gas by the midpoint of his fights. The easy thing would be to work on this problem by having Taylor spar more and work on his aerobic conditioning.

However, I’m sure Taylor has done all of this by now, and this is the best that we can get out of him. Sometimes fighters can’t fight more than six rounds without gassing despite training hard for longer bouts. Oscar De La Hoya is a perfect example of a fighter with this kind of problem.

It hurt his career a great deal, because De La Hoya likely could have beaten Shane Mosley, Felix Trinidad and Floyd Mayweather Jr. if his stamina was better. He led all three of them in the first half of his fights with them, and lost the bouts when he ran out of gas in the second half of his fights.

Taylor is possibly going to get a second shot at a fight with Froch, as they talked about a rematch after the fight last Saturday night. That would be the ideal fight for Taylor, because he dominated Froch in most of the rounds of the fight, and then messed things up by letting Froch exchange shots with him in the 12th.

If Taylor could have stayed away from Froch by using a lot of lateral movement and clinches, Taylor would have easily the fight. This is a training issue, as Taylor should have had a plan to use to run out the clock against a dangerous puncher like Froch.

It was no secret what Froch was going to try and do going into the 12th round. He way behind in the fight and needed a knockout to win. All Taylor had to do was stay away and he would have won the fight. If I were Taylor, I would get my promoter to work on trying to get Froch back in the ring for a rematch.

In the meantime, I would suggest that Taylor work extra hard on his conditioning and learn how to manage a clock in the 12th rounds. If need be, Taylor needs to change his style of fighting to include more clinching after punching.

In other words, take on a style like Bernard Hopkins, which is suited for fighters with less slightly less energy. Taylor would be very effective using this style, because of his hand speed. He could pretty much dictate the fight by getting off his quicker shots first and then immediately grabbing his opponent in a clinch to prevent them from getting their punches off.

Certainly, it wouldn’t be interesting to watch, but it would enable Taylor to get some more years out of his boxing career. Baseball players make adjustments when they older. For example, fastball pitchers often become junk ball pitchers when they’ve lost their fastball through natural aging or the result of an injury. There’s no reason why Taylor can’t make needed adjustments to his own style in order to save his career.

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