By Jason Kim: Last Saturday night’s 12th round knockout of Jermain Taylor didn’t surprise me in the least. I saw it coming as soon as they announced he was facing Arthur Abraham in the Super Six tournament on October 17th. I think it was a bad idea for Showtime to invite the 31-year-old Taylor to the Super Six tournament, although I can understand why they did choose him.

Taylor’s name recognition is what got him in the tournament, but they should have known that he was going to have problems and end up getting knocked out when put in with the top quality fighters that are taking part in the tournament. I suppose they must have been hoping for the best when they decided to include Taylor. However, Taylor came into the tournament having been defeated in three out of his last four fights with two of them being bad knockout losses to Kelly Pavlik and Carl Froch.

Taylor’s last fight before the tournament was a 12th round knockout loss to Froch in April. And in a lot of ways, his fight with Abraham resembled the Froch fight. The main difference is that Taylor didn’t try to slug with Abraham in the first part of the bout and instead focused on throwing mainly jabs. But like the Froch fight, Taylor made the mistake of trying to punch with Abraham in the final round and ended up getting hit with a big right hand straight down the middle that flattened Taylor.

And now Taylor finds himself in a situation where he likely won’t be finishing out the tournament and will have to make some big decisions about the rest of his future. I’m sure that Taylor will continue to box, but I doubt his promoter will allow him to stay in the Super Six tournament and risk getting hurt further.

Taylor’s next bout is against Andre Ward, who isn’t a huge puncher but who hits plenty hard enough to cause Taylor problems. At this point, I wouldn’t surprised that even a fighter like Ward would be huge problems for Taylor because his ability to take punishment appears to have gone down since his first knockout loss to Pavlik in 2007.

So now, with his chin possibly compromised, Taylor is going to have to figure out what to do with his career and whether he should continue on. I’d like to see him continue to fight but not in the Super Six tournament because it’s too dangerous for him right now.

Taylor needs to be fighting less talented fighters for awhile until he gets his head together and is healed enough to continue fighting against the top of the division. But in the Super Six tournament, Taylor would be having two more fights against Ward and Mikkel Kessler and I see both of those fights ending in losses for Taylor, probably knockout losses.