By Jim Dower: Both Jermain Taylor (27-2-1, 17 KOs) and Jeff Lacy (24-1, 17 KOs) are in roughly the same boat, each of them around thirty years-old, and both coming off of a string of unimpressive performances dating back two years or more.
In Taylor’s case, it’s been three and a half years since he’s looked truly good, at which time he stopped Daniel Edouard in the 3rd round in February 2005. Since then, Taylor’s record is four wins and two losses with one draw. However, the wins, victories over Bernard Hopkins, Kassim Ouma, and Cory Spinks, has seen Taylor looking only like a shell of his former self. His speed has remained the same, there’s been no change in that department, but his power and boxing ability seems to have regressed with age.
Following those wins, Taylor stepped into a fight against unbeaten middleweight Kelly Pavlik, who promptly defeated Taylor twice in a row. With those two fights behind him, Taylor steps into his fight tonight with Lacy, 31, almost desperate in need of a win in order to remain a drawing power in boxing. With a new trainer, Pat Burns, Taylor is hoping that he can bring back some of his youth, enough hopefully to defeat the power punching Lacy.
It may turn out, however, that what Taylor seeks is an impossibility. At 31, he may be seeing a decline which will only worsen in the remaining years of his career. He has helped himself somewhat by moving up to the super middleweight division where there are arguably less talented fighters than at middleweight.
At the same time, it enables Taylor to avoid a potential third fight with Pavlik, who after two previous wins over Taylor, may simply just have his number. Even at super middleweight, if Taylor isn’t able to fight hard for more than six to eight rounds, something that has plagued him in his last seven fights, then he’s not likely to be successful at this weight class either.
With fighters like Lucian Bute, Librado Andrade, Denis Inkin, Mikkel Kessler and Carl Froch, Taylor has some very tough opposition to deal with indeed. However, for Taylor to get to fighters like that, he’s going to have to get past Lacy tonight in a make or break it fight for him as well as Lacy.
If Taylor can’t beat Lacy, who many boxing writers feel has been a shot fighter since losing to Joe Calzaghe in 2006, then Taylor may have to consider moving out of the division and seek greener pastures elsewhere, possibly in the light heavyweight division which has even fewer stars than the super middleweights.
As for Lacy, he’s won his last three fights since being defeated by Calzaghe, yet he’s struggled in each of them against fighters that he probably would have destroyed pre-Calzaghe. It’s unclear what seems to be hampering Lacy.
Some say it’s a confidence problem lingering from his loss to Calzaghe, whereas others point to his serious shoulder injury (torn rotator cuff of his left shoulder) that he suffered in his battle against Vitali Tsypko in December 2006.
In the end, it may be neither of these things, and just the fact that Lacy is growing old and slowing down. Whatever the case, he’s going to need to try and recapture some of his meanness, power and intensity if he hopes to defeat Taylor tonight.
This isn’t a fight that he’s going to be able to win by fighting hard for only six rounds. He’s going to need to take the fight to Taylor much in the same way that Pavlik and try to hit him as hard as he can to try and take him out or make him cautious.