By Eric Thomas: In the super middleweight showdown between Jeff Lacy (24-2, 17 KOs) and Jermain Taylor (28-2-1, 17 KOs), as expected, Taylor easily defeated Lacy by a one-sided 12-round unanimous decision in the World Boxing Council super middleweight title eliminator bout at the Vanderbilt University Memorial Gymnasium, in Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday night.
Taylor, 30, hurt Lacy in the 3rd round, staggering him with a huge left hook to the head. However, he was unable to put him away as Lacy showed great recuperative powers and survived without going down.
In the 5th round, Lacy dropped Taylor with a huge right hand, but the knockdown was waived off by referee Lawrence Cole. However, the knockdown seemed legitimate from what I saw of it, and Taylor acted hurt after getting up, clinching hard and not throwing punches for period of time.
In the later rounds of the fight, the fight turned completely one-sided and he battered Lacy at will with hard shots to the head, making his face swell badly from the many shots that he was forced to eat at the hands of Taylor.
In the end, Lacy was far too limited to deal with Taylor’s speed, better offensive arsenal and superior boxing skills. Whereas Lacy had only one weapon – a powerful right hand – to use, Taylor had a great right hand, uppercut, left hook and jabs to use on him.
As such, Lacy’s only real chance was to try and score a knockout in the early rounds, but when that didn’t happen, he essentially had no chance against Taylor and subsequently took a tremendous beating from him on par with the beating that Lacy received against Calzaghe in 2006.
Taylor dominated the first round, using his jab and right hands shots to do the damage. Lacy plodded after him for much of the round, looking for opportunities to land big rights. However, he only succeeded in landing a few shots in the round, because of Taylor’s movement.
Lacy’s hand speed, or lack thereof, was badly exposed in the opening round, for he looked much slower than Taylor and had trouble landing his shots because Taylor’s faster punches often arrived first well ahead of his.
In rounds two and three, Taylor continued his masterful boxing, throwing double hooks and fast flurries to the head and body of Lacy, and keeping him constantly under a tremendous barrage of punches. In the 3rd, as mentioned previously, Taylor hurt Lacy with a big left hook to the head, staggering Lacy for a brief moment.
However, there wasn’t enough time left in the round for Taylor to finish him off, but he gamely tried, landing a flurry of shots as the round ended. In the 4th round, Taylor battered Lacy while he was against the ropes, landing a blizzard of punches thrown very quickly one after another to the head.
The round reminded me a lot like the 2nd round of Taylor’s first fight with Kelly Pavlik in which he hit Pavlik with a storm of punches, hurting him and knocking him to the canvas. Lacy did nothing in the round other than take one shot after another, and it looked really for him.
It wasn’t until near the end of the round that Lacy finally was able to throw any punches of his own, a few feeble shots that missed by a mile. Taylor then counted him with a huge left-right combination to the head to end the round.
In the 5th, Lacy came back strong and dropped Taylor with a beautiful right hand to the head. The referee, however, seemed to miss the call and waived off the knockdown, ruling it a slip. Whatever the case, Lacy fought well for the remainder of the round, blasting away at Taylor with huge combinations as he covered up.
Still largely missing from those combinations, though, was Lacy’s once powerful left hook, which used to be his primary weapon before tearing up his left shoulder in a bout with Vitali Tsypko in a December 2006 bout. Lacy threw the left against Taylor, but the power was now mostly all but gone, leaving him with only his right hand for his power shots.
After the 5th, Lacy was pretty much done for the fight, as he was unable to match Taylor’s speed or put him into any kind of trouble for the remainder of the fight. In rounds six through twelve, Taylor gave Lacy a terrible beating, hitting him at will and making him look bad in the process. Unlike his two losses to Pavlik, Taylor fought very relaxed, boxing smoothly without showing signs of tiring or getting flustered.
The loss for Lacy, his second in two years, was a huge blow for him as he’s been in the rebuilding stage of his career since his lopsided decision loss to Joe Calzaghe in March 2006. Though still ranked high in the division after his loss to Calzaghe, this defeat is going to drop Lacy down a few notches in the division, and make it that much harder for him to work his way back into a title shot.
At 31, Lacy’s got his work cut out for him against many of the younger, seemingly more talented super middleweights that are coming up in the division. With that in mind, it might be a good idea for Lacy to try and drop down in weight to the middleweight division where his heavy punches might have more of a effect against the smaller fighters.
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