Fighting for respect
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Jermain Taylor was asked to imagine what he would be going through had he lost one of his last four fights.
The middleweight champion chuckled and said, "Yeah, it wouldn't be good. I don't even I want to think about that."
A little less than two years ago, Taylor was perhaps the game's brightest prospect, combining a model's good looks, a pleasing personality and the athletic ability of an NBA small forward. About the only thing he couldn't do, it seemed, was leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Fast forward 22 months and much has changed in Taylor's world. He has won the undisputed middleweight championship, defended it successfully three times and is ranked by many experts among the top 10 boxers in the world.
But Taylor, who defends his WBC belt against Cory Spinks Saturday night at the FedEx Forum, has had to endure a torrent of criticism that has left him angrily wondering what more he could do to win over the skeptics. He won the title by scoring a hotly debated decision over Bernard Hopkins, who had held his belt for more than a decade. After a close win in a rematch over Hopkins, Taylor fought to a draw last June with Winky Wright, who was only a year removed from having held the undisputed super welterweight title and is regarded as the best boxer in the world not named Mayweather.
Taylor's promoter, Lou DiBella, flatly said after the draw with Wright that he was going to match Taylor easily in his next outing, suggesting either Bozo the Clown or Clarabell the Clown.
The clown opponent turned out to be no joke. Taylor was matched against left-hander Kassim Ouma, himself a former 154-pound champion and one of the most awkward men in the sport. "Some breather," Taylor snorted.
And that brings us to Saturday night's fight, where Taylor defends against the son of Leon Spinks, the 1976 Olympic gold medalist. Leon, who once upset Muhammad Ali to win the heavyweight title in just his eighth pro fight, figures history is about to repeat itself.
"Of course he can," Leon said of the possibility of his son bucking the 8-1 odds against him and scoring the upset. "He's a better boxer than me and I did it."
As evidenced by the long odds in his favor, Taylor is widely expected to squash Cory Spinks, who began his career as a super lightweight and spent most of it as a welterweight. Spinks was viciously knocked out by Zab Judah in his final appearance on Feb. 5, 2005, but he is the type of quick and clever boxer who has historically given aggressive fighters like Taylor fits.
And so Taylor again finds himself in a no-win position. Knock out Spinks and it will be chalked up to fighting a smaller man who didn't deserve the fight in the first place. Lose and he knows he'll be excoriated by the very same folks who had once billed him as the sport's next big star.
Taylor insists he doesn't read what has been written about him, which makes the fact that he's so well aware of what has been written and said all the more remarkable.
"I realize now I can't satisfy people, so all I worry about is satisfying myself," Taylor said. "I try to represent myself and my sport the right way, but there is always something wrong.
"I beat Hopkins and they said it was the judges. So I do it again and they said he was an old man. And then I fight Winky Wright, who no one else would fight, and he cries about the decision and I said, 'Let's fight again.' And you know, I fought that fight. I didn't take time off. And I got dead tired against (Ouma), but I fought and I won again."
The problem with Taylor is that he looks like Michael Jordan in boxing trunks. He oozes athleticism, combining strength and flair like few can do. His trainer, the sage Emanuel Steward, said Taylor's problems are no more than the result of poor matches.
Hopkins is a conventional boxer in stance only. He is one of the game's most unorthodox fighters. Wright and Ouma are both left-handers with confounding styles, which is exactly what Taylor is going to face against Spinks.
Steward longs for the day when Taylor has someone in front of him who A) is right-handed and B) stands and fights. One such potential opponent is Edison Miranda, the power-punching Colombian who fights unbeaten Kelly Pavlik in an eliminator bout in the opener of Saturday's HBO broadcast. Steward nearly salivates when he thinks of a potential fight against Miranda.
"I don't care who you are. It's impossible to look good against Bernard Hopkins, and Jermain had to fight him not once, but twice," Steward said. "And no way, in my opinion, should he have been fighting Winky Wright after going 24 (rounds) with Hopkins.
"If he fights Miranda, it's going to get a lot of hype and a lot of attention, but it won't be much of a fight. Jermain will knock him right out. It won't even be a contest. It will be an easy fight for him."
It will be an easy fight for Taylor on Saturday if he can hit Spinks cleanly. There's little chance Spinks can stand up to his opponent's power, and his chance of winning depends on his ability to keep Taylor off-balance. He almost certainly won't be able to hurt Taylor, so he'll have to hunt and peck his way to a win in a fight that could have the boo birds out early.
It's bound to irritate Taylor even more if that happens, but he tried to be philosophical about it.
"I'm the kind of guy who will fight anybody because I like to compete," Taylor said. "If you think you're better than me, all right then, let's put them on and get in there and do it. There aren't a lot of guys who would have taken the guys I did, let alone still be the champion.
"I'm not asking to be set up with guys who will make me look good. Whoever they say the best is, that's who I fight. Nothing more I can do than that. If they don't like it, well, I'm sorry then. I have no answers."
