By Allan Fox: In watching former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (30-4-1, 18 KO’s) struggle to beat B level fighter Caleb Truax (18-1-1, 10 KO’s) by an unimpressive 10 round unanimous decision last Friday night, the last thing I would recommend for the 33-year-old Taylor would be for him to step it up after this fight against better middleweights than Truax.

Taylor looked like he lacked flexibility, and stamina. He didn’t really throw much more than jabs the entire fight, and it appeared that he was fighting that way in order not to run out of gas like he had been doing in most of his fights leading up to his two year layoff from boxing from 2009 to 2011.

If Taylor was purposely trying to fight in a conservative manner in order not to tire out then it didn’t really help him much because he clearly did tire out in the last have of the fight against Truax. This cost Taylor when he threw what his trainer Pat Burns described as a lazy jab in the 9th round. Truax came over the top with a hard right hand to the jab of Taylor while he was slowly pulling his jab back. Truax’s punch put Taylor down on his backside on the canvas. Although Taylor says he wasn’t hurt, he clearly was because he immediately turned his back to the referee and looked disoriented. To his credit, Taylor was smart enough to clinch his way out of the round, but it was not a good sign that he can’t even beat a 2nd tier fighter like Truax without getting dropped.

Taylor said after the fight “I want a top 10 [contender]. You can’t just knock me down and expect to win.”

If Taylor gets his way, we could be seeing him in against the likes of Joachim Alcine, Domenico Spada, Marco Antonio Rubio…etc. As watered down as the middleweight division is, Taylor can get a 2nd tier opponent even if he faces a top tier fighter. If his promoter picks the weakest top 10 contender among the four sanctioning bodies, Taylor will likely get someone maybe a little better or worse than Truax. I can see Taylor winning under those conditions but if he faces a legitimate top 10 contender, Taylor will have problems because of the combination of his unwillingness to throw a lot of punches and his fragile chin. He’s not going to be able to beat everyone just throwing jabs and sporadic combinations. He’s no longer willing or able to throw power shots compared to years ago in his prime, and that’s going to be his undoing when he starts facing better opponents.