By Dan Ambrose: After a week of a so-called retirement, former IBF super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy (24-1, 17 KOs) will be coming back to fight former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (27-2-1, 17 KOs) on November 15th, in Las Vegas. Frankly, I’m not in the least surprised that Lacy is coming back, because he’s still fighting well, is popular with many boxing fans, and is still highly sought after as a potential opponent by other popular fighters. He’s also paid well for his fights, even though he doesn’t currently hold a championship belt.
Lacy, 31, is coming off another less than impressive on July 23rd against Epifanio Mendoza, in which Lacy was given a 10-round majority decision win. In the fight, Lacy was staggered several times and on one occasion, in the 8th round, he ended up tackling Mendoza to gain a little time to recover. For a moment there, it looked as if Lacy wouldn’t make it out of the round for he was badly shook from a big right hand that he took to the top of his head. Mendoza’s power was quite exceptional, and Lacy may taken on more than he bargained for by signing on to fight a dangerous puncher like Mendoza.
It was a fight that Lacy should feel fortunate that he given the decision, because many people felt that he lost the fight due to him being outworked in the majority of the rounds in the second half of the fight, not to mention him being badly hurt in the 2nd and 8th rounds. This was the second time in the last three fights that Lacy won a fight in a controversial manner, with the first occurring against Vitali Tsypko in a 10-round majority decision in December 2006.
Taylor, 29, has had his own problems as of late, losing his last two fights to knockout artist Kelly Pavlik. Although in fairness to Taylor, he fought the wrong kind of fight in his first bout with Pavlik in September 2007, trying to go right at Pavlik and slug with him. It was a huge mistake as it turns out, and Taylor, who dropped Pavlik in the 2nd round and had him on the verge of a knockout, eventually wore out under Pavlik’s heavy pressure and powerful shots and was subsequently stopped in the 7th round.
In their rematch held on February 16, 2008, Taylor fought much better, choosing to use his boxing skills and movement to keep Pavlik from cornering him and landing his big shots. Taylor did well until late in the fight, but gave away the last two rounds to lose the fight. If he had let his hands go a bit more during this time, he might have been able to pull out the decision but he seemed to fight too conservatively during this stretch and ended up losing.
Judging how Lacy has looked in his last four fights, it’s doubtful he’ll be able to defeat a fighter in the class of Taylor. That’s not to say that Taylor is an incredible fighter, because he’s vulnerable against heavy sluggers like Lacy, but he probably will be too quick and elusive for Lacy to deal with effectively. I think Taylor has learned his lesson from his previous defeats to Pavlik and will be coming into this fight thinking of only boxing rather than trying to mix it up with Lacy.
For his part, Lacy isn’t as dangerous as he used to be now that his once dangerous left hook has been weakened after his surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff on his left shoulder, but he still has a very powerful right hand that he can potentially take Taylor out with if he can land it often enough.