By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (30-4-1, 18 KO’s) will be finally getting back in the ring after a six month absence to fight 36-year-old journeyman Raul Munoz (22-15-1, 16 KO’s) on October 12th in a televised fight on Showtime at the Ameristar Casino in Saint Charles, Missouri.

Now here’s the kicker: The Taylor-Munoz fight will only have brief clips of the fight shown to fans, as the main event will be Puerto Rican super featherweight prospect Jose Pedraza (10-0, 6 KO’s) facing Allan Benitez (7-1, 1 KO’s) and the co main event will be middleweight prospect Jonathan Cepeda (12-0, 11 KO’s) facing Lamar Russ (10-0, 6 KO’s). Taylor, 34, is ranked #6 WBC, #8 WBO, #14 IBF, compared to the two fights that will be pitting only prospects. It’s kind of hard to believe how far Taylor has fallen. He can’t even get his full fight shown on the bottom of a Showtime card with prospects put above him.

I guess Taylor only has himself to blame. He hasn’t fought for months and is just letting too much time go by in between fights. Taylor hasn’t been a relevant fighter in many years as it is. He missed from 2009n to 2011 after suffering a serious knockout loss to Arthur Abraham in the Super Six tournament. In addition to that knockout loss, Taylor was also stopped by Carl Froch and Kelly Pavlik in bad KO defeats.

Before Taylor stopped fighting after his defeat to Abraham in 2009, he had lost three out of his last four fights. It’s good that he finally did come back but he’s been incredibly slow in stepping it up, and we’ve seen with this six month time in between fights, he’s not exactly the most active fighter despite being kind of old.

In his last fight, Taylor defeated Caleb Truax last April and was shockingly knocked down in the 9th round in an fight that should have been an easy one. It would have been an easy fight for most top middleweight contenders and champions, but Taylor had problems and that’s not a good sign at all.