By Jason Kim: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor is reportedly already close to his fighting weight for his October 17th Super Six tournament bout against Arthur Abraham. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Taylor has been having to take off 20 pounds of weight just two weeks before his fights, leaving him weakened for his bouts. However, this time, Taylor, 31, is already close to the 168 pound weight limit for his October 17th bout against Abraham.

Taylor said “A guy can’t keep losing 20 pounds two weeks out and expect to have energy.” This could explain Taylor’s recent 12th round knockout defeat at the hands of World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch on April 24th. Taylor dominated the fight through most of the fight but seemed to wear down in the later rounds on his own.

Froch wasn’t doing much effective pressuring and mostly just taking shots from Taylor. But Taylor looked exhausted by the 8th and had little energy in the last four rounds of the fight. For Taylor, it’s never been a question about whether he had the talent to beat any fighter in the middleweight – and now the super middleweight division – but rather if he had the stamina to get the job done.

More and more, it’s appeared that Taylor doesn’t have the stamina, at least up until now. Taylor wore out in fights against Bernard Hopkins, Winky Wright, Cory Spinks, Kelly Pavlik and more recently with Froch. It’s longer even debatable. It’s academic. Taylor has conditioning problems that are serious enough for him to fade much earlier than most of his opponents.

It doesn’t matter if Taylor has much better hand speed than fighters like Froch, Abraham and Mikkel Kessler. If Taylor doesn’t have the stamina to fight hard for more than seven or eight rounds, then he’s going to lose to all of them. Taylor seems hold back when letting his hands go during rounds, which prevents him from knocking out opponents like he used to do earlier in his career.

In fact, Taylor hasn’t had a knockout in four years, although he’s been knocked out himself twice now. Taylor’s record frankly stinks in the past two years, as he’s now lost three out of his last four fights. Granted, Taylor has only been beaten by good fighters, losing twice to Pavlik and once to Froch, but if he wants to continue on as a world class fighter, this isn’t a good sigh that he’s getting taken out by other fighters with less skills than him.

Taylor has to be able to fight hard for 12 rounds, and he can’t be holding back for fear that he’s going to gas out. Most boxers are able to fight hard for a round and then recover in the next round, but with Taylor he tires out and stays that weight for the remainder of the fight. There is no second wind with Taylor.

Abraham, 29, has endurance problems of his own, it seems. His work rate, never good to begin with, has gone down more and more with each fight the past three years. And now, Abraham seemingly is only able to fight hard for a small portion of every round.