Jermain Taylor: I’ll beat Sergio Mora

By Boxing News - 01/07/2015 - Comments

taylor775By Dan Ambrose: IBF middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (33-4-1, 20 KOs) expects to come out on top when he faces Sergio Mora (27-3-2, 9 KOs) on February 6th at the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino, in Biloxi, Miss.

Taylor will be making his defense of his IBF belt that he won recently over the aging 40-year-old Sam Soliman last year in October. It was the perfect opponent for Taylor, as Soliman didn’t have the kind of punching power to worry him like the other middleweight champions would have.

By picking Mora, who can’t punch, Taylor is getting another light hitter and increasing his chances of holding onto his title for a little while.

It’s a good match-up for Taylor in being put in with #14 IBF Mora instead of someone who could potentially knock him out the way that Arthur Abraham, Kelly Pavlik and Carl Froch all did in their fights with Taylor.

Taylor at one time was considered to be the best fighter in the middleweight division many years ago. However, after a knockout loss to Pavlik in 2007, Taylor’s career went downhill quickly with him suffering additional losses to Pavlik, Froch and Abraham.

“I am thrilled to be returning to Beau Rivage in Biloxi to defend my IBF middleweight world title,” said Jermain Taylor. “Regaining the belt meant everything to me and I will be 100 percent focused in training camp to retain my championship. On February 6, boxing fans will be in for a real exciting night of action when I defeat the Latin Snake, Sergio Mora.”

We don’t know if Taylor will be able to continue fighting or not after this title defense because he’s facing a number of legal issues resulting from a shooting that occurred at his residence this past year.

If Taylor losses that court case he could be dealing with some major problems that could derail his career for a while. He’s already getting up there in age at thirty six, so it’s not as if he’s got a lot of time to sit out of the ring and deal with legal problems.

Mora has done his job in beating his last five opponents. However, none of them were highly ranked fighters, and none of them were good enough to where you could say that Mora deserves a world title shot.

If Mora were to have to face one top five contender, I’m sure boxing fans wouldn’t have any problems with him getting a title shot against Taylor. But with the way it looks now, it just appears that Taylor’s handlers picked out a soft job for him to face so that he can have a better chance of holding onto his IBF title.



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