Jermain Taylor being moved to lockdown hospital for evaluation

By Boxing News - 01/27/2015 - Comments

taylor77By Jim Dower: Former middleweight champion Jermain Taylor’s odd behavior and his subsequent arrest on January 19th for allegedly firing a gun at the Martin Luther King parade in Little Rock, Arkansas has led to him being taken to a lockdown hospital for him to be fully evaluated mentally. Taylor’s behavior is out of the norm for him, according to his attorney Hubert Alexander.

“Everybody is saying this isn’t the Jermain Taylor they know,” Alexander said via arkansasonline.com. “We’re trying to figure out who then heck it is.”

Taylor allegedly had an altercation with Thelton and Toya Smith during the Martin Luther King parade, and he allegedly pulled a gun on them after their 5-year-old son dropped Taylor’s IBF middleweight belt that he’d been holding.

Last year in August, Taylor was arrested for and accused of shooting his cousin at Taylor’s home in Arkansas. Further, Taylor was also accused of throwing a brick throw a women’s window of her car last December.

The mental evaluation will determine whether the 36-year-old Taylor is competent to undergo a trial for the latest charges, according to THV11’s Marielle Mohs.
Taylor is expected to be moved to the hospital on Tuesday.

Last October, Taylor turned his career around in beating IBF middleweight champion Sam Soliman by a 12 round unanimous decision to capture the International Boxing Federation 160 pound title.

For Taylor, it was a huge win, because many fans had given up on Taylor as being past his prime and no longer capable of winning a world title. But it was a case of him still having enough left in the tank to defeat an older fighter than himself without power and with a bad knee.

Taylor knocked the gimpy kneed Soliman down four times in the fight, but largely due to Soliman’s bad leg not being able to hold him up when he was under attack.



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