Former WBO/WBC middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (27-1, 17 KOs) will be in the fight of his life on February 16th when he fights unbeaten knockout artist Kelly Pavlik (32-0, 29 KOs) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Taylor, 30, has a tremendous amount of pressure on him at this stage of his career, coming off a 7th round TKO loss to the 25 year-old Pavlik.
To date, it’s been almost three years since Taylor last looked good, at that time stopping middleweight prospect Daniel Edouard in the 3rd round. Though Taylor likes to blame his pedestrian performances on his opponents’ – Bernard Hopkins, Kassim Ouma, Cory Spinks, Winky Wright and Kelly Pavlik – style, the fact remains that Taylor has seemingly regressed as a fighter. Whether that be because of age or due to a mental slump, it’s unknown. What is clear, however, is that Taylor looks nothing like he did in the early part of his career.
Not only has he lost speed on his punches, but he also throws less and is much more cautious than before. Of course, he was fighting much less skillful opponents then, which would account for his high percentage of knockouts in this era. That wouldn’t explain his drop in handspeed, a problem that usually indicates that Taylor is beginning to age. With all that said, Taylor could easily have beaten Pavlik, that is, if Taylor had fought more defensively instead of going all out and trying to mix it up with Pavlik. Strangely enough, Taylor was beating – barely – Pavlik at his own game up to the point of the knockout, having knocked Pavlik down in the 2nd round and had him on the brink of a stoppage.
Taylor made a crucial mistake by punching himself out as he threw a large number of wild shots, most of them missing badly. Finally, Taylor tired himself out so much, he basically stopped punching for the last portion of the round. It was embarrassing, as here Taylor had Pavlik ready to go and because of his urgency to score the knockout, he let him slip out from under his thumb. The strain would haunt Taylor in the subsequent rounds as he remained tired from the earlier onslaught and could roughly only fight in spurts for most of the rest of the way.
If, however, Taylor had stuck to boxing, staying on the outside and focusing on sticking and moving, he could have kept Pavlik out of range, unable to land any of his big shots. What most boxing fans forget, however, is that Pavlik, for all his power, is essentially a plodder. He’s not particularly fast and relies on having his opponents standing straight in front of him trying to trade. Without that kind of opponent, Pavlik is badly crippled and is basically an average fighter.
The problem for Taylor, though, is that he rarely fights smart, instead letting his opponents dictate how the fight will be fought. Taylor, in turn, tends to mimic them, fighting in the same style as they do and trying to beat them at their own game. In that respect, he is almost formless, as he has no set identity that he uses each time he fights.