By Eric Thomas: Former IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (31-4-1, 19 KO’s) will be back in the ring for the first time in over a year this Saturday night in his fight against Juan Carlos Candelo (32-12-4, 21 KO’s) at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas, USA.
The 35-year-old Taylor is coming back to try and capture another world title at 160, but his chances aren’t good. Taylor hasn’t been a force in the middleweight division in the past 5 years since his back to back losses to Kelly Pavlik.
“They’re looking at me and they’re saying that same thing, that I can’t come back and win a world title,” Taylor said to RingTV. “But we’ll see who will have the last laugh.”
Taylor seems a little deluded about his own talent. The odds are stacked against him doing anything, but he’s not helping his chances by wasting long periods of time with tune-ups and not fighting. You have an argument that Taylor doesn’t need years of tuneups. He already knows how to fight, and the outcome of him fighting someone like Gennady Golovkin will be the same without the tune-ups as it will be with them. Either he can take getting hit by Golovkin’s big bombs or he can’t. Fighting journeyman isn’t going to help Taylor get ready for the top fighters in the middleweight division.
The 39-year-old Candelo has been around for a long time. He’s been in with guys like Marco Antonio Rubio, Verno Phillips, Winky Wright and Fernando Guerrero, and lost to all of them.
Things went downhill for Taylor after his defeats with him losing to Carl Froch and Arthur Abraham by knockout defeats in 2009. The second defeat occurred in the Super Six tournament in which Taylor was badly knocked out by Abraham in the 12th round. Taylor then wisely pulled out of the tournament rather than risk suffering additional knockout defeats.
Taylor then took two years off from boxing before returning in 2011 to pick up victories over Jessie Nicklow, Caleb Truax and Raul Munoz. Taylor stopped fighting for a year after his win over Munoz, and it was kind of strange because he could have been fighting against the top guys in the division by this point had he stayed busy during the past year. But the time off will cause Taylor to lose what will likely be a year before he’s ready to step it up against the quality opposition. Taylor will still only be 36, but that could be an old 36 due to his knockout losses and his long stretches of inactivity.
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