Jermaine "Bad Intentions" Taylor was razor sharp, highly motivated and as patient and quick as he's ever been. Yet he still could not outgun, consistently outquick or ultimately outpoint the still undefeated concensus middleweight champion Kelly "The Ghost" Pavlik. Pavlik went the full 12 rounds for the first time in his career and proved he could sustain his attack, defense and skills the whole championship distance against what will probably prove to be his toughest test anytime soon. For him, that's a good thing now that he is the biggest shark in the deepest waters of his division and at the deep end of the pond, fights often go the distance.
As for this fight, what was expected to be another war of mutual assured destruction with the greater superpower prevailing turned out to be a tactical war of attrition...in which the greater superpower still prevailed. With control over the rematch weight and with a new old trainer in tow, Jermaine Taylor imagined that his very best could beat Kelly Pavlik, but he was wrong. Pavlik proved too fundamentally sound and quick-handed to be decisioned by Taylor.
In this column, before the fight, I called the Ring Magazine's prediction of a 5th round KO of Taylor by Pavlik a disservice to Taylor. After all, before Pavlik took Taylor's middleweight crown in their first fight on September 29 of 2007, Taylor had never lost. He'd beat the man who beat the man. He rose to the occasion against Bernard Hopkins, decisioning the champ twice in succession. Hopkins had not lost in 20 title defenses. Sure, he'd fought down to some competition since, but he'd never lost though he'd lost some lustre. To write him off was to ignore his will to win and his significant skills.
In the pre-fight hype to this rematch, Taylor's trainer implied that Taylor had taken Pavlik too lightly the first time around. Coming off Pavlik's destruction of Miranda, that's almost hard to believe...but I will grant that after watching the rematch, Taylor was much better prepared this time around. I've also called Taylor an exemplary mimic without a real style of his own and while there's some truth to that, his level best performance showed me that his style is his athleticism. He did not try to mimic Pavlik, nor was he lazy and dropping his off hand to his waist as he's prone to do. He defended as well as he could all night long against Pavlik's sledgehammer jab and turned away a ton of right hand bombs from Pavlik. While his style is still very much based in his super-athleticism, he did defend, had a game plan, stayed focused and executed it for nearly the entire fight. It just wasn't enough.
I believed that Taylor's best chance would be to move laterally to prevent Pavlik from setting to throw. He didn't really do that, so he didn't really change his style at all. Keeping in mind that 4 of the 5 rounds that went to Taylor on my card (3, 6, 7 and 10) were clearly his (only Taylor's round 2 was close on my card)...he managed at times to be clearly the better fighter. But by fights end, those times were too few...and ultimately too poorly sustained. Pavlik was consistent, pressuring Taylor constantly. When he pushed or slapped his jab, he lost rounds...but when he snapped it and committed to it, the rounds tilted invariably his way.
I will eschew a round-by-round recap in favor of the flavor of the fight because those round-by-round regurgitations can be tedious (don't read my next one). This was two great fighters at their best for ten rounds. Taylor fought in spurts, but when he sustained his attack he was faster and more accurate. Fully 6 of the 7 rounds that I gave to Pavlik, I considered close and one (round 5) I considered almost too close to call. Keeping in mind that flipping that round for Taylor would have resulted in a draw on my card, my opinion was apparently shared by only one of the official judges. My score card read 115-113 for Pavlik by the end of the fight, but the official scorecards were almost all more lopsided, all for Pavlik too: 117-111; 116-112 and; 115-113.
Please look to the last paragraph in sentence two. See the issue? this was a 12 round fight. Unfortunately for Taylor, he faded as predicted by Pavlik's trainer. He waited a long time to do it and put up a heck of a performance ...for ten rounds. On my card, the fight was dead even after 10 rounds, with Taylor having won the 10th convincingly. In that 10th, he looked the fresher fighter and was making Pavlik look a step slow. Then in the 11th, for the first time in the fight, Taylor found his back to the ropes and when that happened, it seemed rewrite the upset ending.
Until then, Taylor had spent 10 rounds making sure that his back was never on the ropes. He definitely intended to avoid that mistake, made repeatedly in the first fight. Resting on the ropes is a mistake he could get away with against lesser opponents and it got him in big trouble repeatedly in the first tilt with Pavlik, whose relentless aggression and granite chin allow him to stand in the pocket and throw until his opponent wilts or spins out. Taylor kept the fight moving around the center of the ring for the first 30 minutes of the fight, but that made his having allowed it in the 32nd minute so very obvious. By the 12th round, Taylor was tying up when he should have been realizing that the last round of a close fight is where the rubber meets the road. It didn't matter. He was out of gas (though, to be fair, he would apparently still have lost on the official scorecards of two judges even if he'd floored Pavlik).
The HBO team did a noteworthy job this night. In the third, Larry Merchant pointed out that Taylor looked more disciplined and indeed he did. Taylor wasn't as frenetic as in the first fight, recognizing that he was in for a real test (ultimately, too great a test). Emmanuel Steward pointed out Taylor's not having put his back near the ropes during the fourth round, a deliberate plan that lasted until the 11th. Steward also pointed out the sneaky weight of Pavlik's jab in the fourth, at a time that it wasn't necessarily obvious that the jab was doing damage that could slow Taylor as the fight went on. Even Lederman got it right for a while until he revealed he had Taylor up by 2 halfway through the fight, which not only failed to match my card (I had it even), but pretty clearly failed to match the official scorecards. Hearing Lederman try to educate Merchant on-air as to how to score fights was a lowlight, but really the only glaring one of the broadcast.
The bottom line is that we witnessed the true crowning of what may turn out to be the toughest middleweight in a very long time. I called Pavlik to knock Taylor out in the 10th, but even that was failing to give Taylor enough credit. While he faded by the 11th (and got in a little trouble for the only time in the fight), he was determined to give his best, something he said he hadn't done the first time around. His best has always been better than anyone else's. Not this time. There's a new best middleweight in the world now. His name is Kelly Pavlik.
As for this fight, what was expected to be another war of mutual assured destruction with the greater superpower prevailing turned out to be a tactical war of attrition...in which the greater superpower still prevailed. With control over the rematch weight and with a new old trainer in tow, Jermaine Taylor imagined that his very best could beat Kelly Pavlik, but he was wrong. Pavlik proved too fundamentally sound and quick-handed to be decisioned by Taylor.
In this column, before the fight, I called the Ring Magazine's prediction of a 5th round KO of Taylor by Pavlik a disservice to Taylor. After all, before Pavlik took Taylor's middleweight crown in their first fight on September 29 of 2007, Taylor had never lost. He'd beat the man who beat the man. He rose to the occasion against Bernard Hopkins, decisioning the champ twice in succession. Hopkins had not lost in 20 title defenses. Sure, he'd fought down to some competition since, but he'd never lost though he'd lost some lustre. To write him off was to ignore his will to win and his significant skills.
In the pre-fight hype to this rematch, Taylor's trainer implied that Taylor had taken Pavlik too lightly the first time around. Coming off Pavlik's destruction of Miranda, that's almost hard to believe...but I will grant that after watching the rematch, Taylor was much better prepared this time around. I've also called Taylor an exemplary mimic without a real style of his own and while there's some truth to that, his level best performance showed me that his style is his athleticism. He did not try to mimic Pavlik, nor was he lazy and dropping his off hand to his waist as he's prone to do. He defended as well as he could all night long against Pavlik's sledgehammer jab and turned away a ton of right hand bombs from Pavlik. While his style is still very much based in his super-athleticism, he did defend, had a game plan, stayed focused and executed it for nearly the entire fight. It just wasn't enough.
I believed that Taylor's best chance would be to move laterally to prevent Pavlik from setting to throw. He didn't really do that, so he didn't really change his style at all. Keeping in mind that 4 of the 5 rounds that went to Taylor on my card (3, 6, 7 and 10) were clearly his (only Taylor's round 2 was close on my card)...he managed at times to be clearly the better fighter. But by fights end, those times were too few...and ultimately too poorly sustained. Pavlik was consistent, pressuring Taylor constantly. When he pushed or slapped his jab, he lost rounds...but when he snapped it and committed to it, the rounds tilted invariably his way.
I will eschew a round-by-round recap in favor of the flavor of the fight because those round-by-round regurgitations can be tedious (don't read my next one). This was two great fighters at their best for ten rounds. Taylor fought in spurts, but when he sustained his attack he was faster and more accurate. Fully 6 of the 7 rounds that I gave to Pavlik, I considered close and one (round 5) I considered almost too close to call. Keeping in mind that flipping that round for Taylor would have resulted in a draw on my card, my opinion was apparently shared by only one of the official judges. My score card read 115-113 for Pavlik by the end of the fight, but the official scorecards were almost all more lopsided, all for Pavlik too: 117-111; 116-112 and; 115-113.
Please look to the last paragraph in sentence two. See the issue? this was a 12 round fight. Unfortunately for Taylor, he faded as predicted by Pavlik's trainer. He waited a long time to do it and put up a heck of a performance ...for ten rounds. On my card, the fight was dead even after 10 rounds, with Taylor having won the 10th convincingly. In that 10th, he looked the fresher fighter and was making Pavlik look a step slow. Then in the 11th, for the first time in the fight, Taylor found his back to the ropes and when that happened, it seemed rewrite the upset ending.
Until then, Taylor had spent 10 rounds making sure that his back was never on the ropes. He definitely intended to avoid that mistake, made repeatedly in the first fight. Resting on the ropes is a mistake he could get away with against lesser opponents and it got him in big trouble repeatedly in the first tilt with Pavlik, whose relentless aggression and granite chin allow him to stand in the pocket and throw until his opponent wilts or spins out. Taylor kept the fight moving around the center of the ring for the first 30 minutes of the fight, but that made his having allowed it in the 32nd minute so very obvious. By the 12th round, Taylor was tying up when he should have been realizing that the last round of a close fight is where the rubber meets the road. It didn't matter. He was out of gas (though, to be fair, he would apparently still have lost on the official scorecards of two judges even if he'd floored Pavlik).
The HBO team did a noteworthy job this night. In the third, Larry Merchant pointed out that Taylor looked more disciplined and indeed he did. Taylor wasn't as frenetic as in the first fight, recognizing that he was in for a real test (ultimately, too great a test). Emmanuel Steward pointed out Taylor's not having put his back near the ropes during the fourth round, a deliberate plan that lasted until the 11th. Steward also pointed out the sneaky weight of Pavlik's jab in the fourth, at a time that it wasn't necessarily obvious that the jab was doing damage that could slow Taylor as the fight went on. Even Lederman got it right for a while until he revealed he had Taylor up by 2 halfway through the fight, which not only failed to match my card (I had it even), but pretty clearly failed to match the official scorecards. Hearing Lederman try to educate Merchant on-air as to how to score fights was a lowlight, but really the only glaring one of the broadcast.
The bottom line is that we witnessed the true crowning of what may turn out to be the toughest middleweight in a very long time. I called Pavlik to knock Taylor out in the 10th, but even that was failing to give Taylor enough credit. While he faded by the 11th (and got in a little trouble for the only time in the fight), he was determined to give his best, something he said he hadn't done the first time around. His best has always been better than anyone else's. Not this time. There's a new best middleweight in the world now. His name is Kelly Pavlik.
2 comments:
Nice work, sir -- thanks for dropping by and visiting us at Ring Report.
Thank YOU, Tim...for being the first comment on my blog, well...ever. :o)
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