MEET THE TAYLORS

November 29, 2005 - by Nat Gottlieb

Jermain Taylor is the undisputed middleweight champion of the world, a hometown hero in Little Rock, Arkansas. He can't go anywhere in the city without being mobbed for autographs. Yet for all his celebrity, when he walks down the street where he lives, he knows some neighbor's going to make him cringe by yelling, "Hey Jermain, still losing to Erica?'

Erica is Taylor's wife, and when ever they go out on the black top driveway of their home to play one-on-one basketball, the results are predictably the same. Every single time. "I'm the only man on my block who can't beat his wife in basketball," Taylor said.

Not one to make excuses, Taylor certainly could in this case. Erica, a former college basketball star at powerhouse Louisiana Tech, will be playing for the Washington Mystics this coming season in the WNBA. "The closest I came to beating her was 15-8. She's a great outside shooter, and if she comes inside, uses her elbows to push me away. She cheats. If we had a ref, I know I'd get a lot of foul calls," Taylor said.<

"No no. I beat him fair and square," said the 5-10 Erica. "When he gets kidded about not being able to beat me, I tell him, 'Don't feel bad, Jermain, I can beat all the other husbands on the block, too,'"

The one place no one has ever been able to beat Jermain Taylor is in the ring, where he is 24-0 with 17 knockouts. Defeating his wife in basketball is not foremost on his mind right now because on Dec. 3 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Taylor will fight a rematch with Bernard Hopkins (46-3-1, 32 KO's), the man from whom he won his three championship belts. The fight, "No Respect," is being presented by DiBella Entertainment and Golden Boy Promotions and will be broadcast live on HBO Pay-Per-View.

The Taylors are that rare celebrity married couple. They don't go out partying till dawn, and you won't see them in the supermarket tabloids. They are crazy about each other, madly in lovd with their 10-month old daughter Nia, and you won't find a person outside of Hopkins who will say an unkind word about either of them.

"Erica and Jermain are very similar in that they are kind and generous people," said Chris Long, who was Erica's assistant coach at Louisiana Tech and is now head coach. "I follow boxing and Jermain is not typical of what I see. He's a really nice person, polite, he'll talk to anybody. He doesn't have a big head at all. They're both a joy to be around."

While Erica and Jermain are stars, the real celebrity in the Taylor household is daughter Nia. So much so that after being drafted by the Mystics in the second round (19th overall), Erica elected to sit out her rookie season in order to take care of her baby. "I had to think about Nia's well-being. I'm not married to a man who has a 9-5 job. He's gone for weeks at a time. It was the right thing to do, because Nia really got to know her mother," said Erica.

Jermain certainly understands what a sacrifice she made. Like most athletes, they both dreamed as teenagers of making it in the pros, and sweat countless hours for years for a shot to reach that goal.

"It takes a very special person to do what she did," Jermain said. "All her life she wanted to be a pro basketball player. It was a hard choice. I left it up to her. I told her I would respect what ever she decided to do."

Erica gave birth to Nia on Dec. 10, 2004 in her senior year. She sat out five weeks, then came back and played the remainder of the season and was instrumental in getting the Tecksters to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament. Being mother, student and athlete was an incredibly daunting task.

"My life was a whirlwind, especially when my man was away in camp. My day just didn't stop," Erica said.

On those occasions when Jermain wasn't in training and Erica was on the road, he took sole care of the baby, and got a healthy appreciation for his wife's ability to juggle lives.

"When she goes away, I do it all with the baby, change diapers, everything. I don't know how she went to school, practiced and took care of the baby. If it had been me, I wouldn't have been able to keep boxing," Jermain said. "Man, it's very tough to take care of a baby, and Nia is spoiled. She wants all your attention. For Erica to do that, she's an amazing woman."

Jermain has had practice raising kids. When he was five, his father left the home. His mother worked, so Jermain, the older brother, had to take care of his younger sisters when he came home from school. He changed diapers, did the laundry, cooked for them and washed the dishes while his friends were outside just being kids.

"I wasn't raised like a child, I was raised like an adult," Jermain said. "But raising my sisters prepared me to be a better father."

Jermain and Erica met in Colorado Springs in 2000. Jermain was there as part of the U.S. Olympic boxing team that would compete in Sydney. Erica was attending the junior Olympic basketball camp. Both male and female athletes were housed in a single dorm, which is how they ran into each other.

In what may be the all-time worst "pick-up" line, Jermain, who had just finished laundering his clothes and was carrying them, walked up to Erica and said, "Do you know how to fold clothes," Erica recalls. "I told him yes, but it will cost you $20. I took the laundry and he left. We hadn't even exchanged names, he just gave me $20 and his room number. When I was done, I dropped them off. He wasn't there. But later there was a party on our floor. He saw me, came over and said, 'Hey girl, I hear you are from Arkansas (Wheatley). I'm from Little Rock." And thus began a wonderful romance, one that had a profound effect on Jermain, according to his trainer and surrogate father, Ozell Nelson.

"When he first met Erica, he liked her so much he wanted to bring her to the gym and meet me," said Nelson, who took an untutored 13-year-old- kid who wandered into his gym and turned him into an Olympic bronze medalist. "Before, he always had lots of girlfriends, but they didn't effect him like this. He really loved her. She had a hold on him. And why not? She was smart and beautiful."

Erica knew little about boxing and the first time she went to see him fight was a bit of a jolt.

"It was strange that first time, because I only knew him out of the ring, this really nice guy. But in the ring, he was a killer. I was shocked," Erica said. "It was hard for me to watch because that was my husband in there."

Shocked and frightened.

"The first time she saw me fight, she was crying and crying. But she got used to it. Now she yells, 'Come on baby, knock him out!'" Jermain said.

"What changed me is I would always watch Jermain as he came down the aisle toward the ring. I would read his face. If he looked comfortable, I knew he was ready and I wasn't worried. But then he's always ready," Erica said.

Of course being superstar athletes has its disadvantages. Both highly competitive, it is virtually impossible for them to play a civil game of any kind in the house. "If we play Monopoly, we always end up in an argument," Jermain said. "We both want to be the best and win."

"We can't play Monopoly or air hockey or any of these games we have in the house because we're so competitive," Erica said. "If one of us wins, we rub it in. We just can't play for fun."

Asked what she liked most about his wife, Jermain said: "I like the fact she can go out and play a basketball game, take a shower and come out looking like a model. I don't know how she does it."

What does Erica like most about Jermain?

"He's the best person I know. He always gives so much of himself to others, thinks of them before himself." Erica said.

That was reflected when Jermain was asked what his biggest goal in life was.

"I want every one who's been there for me to be happy," he said.

Not to be remembered as the greatest fighter who ever lived?

"I'm not worried about being the greatest, just that my friends and family are happy." And what does Jermain like least about his wife?

"How she sleeps," Jermain said. "She's all over the place. I have to sleep on the edge of the bed."

Erica? "Same thing I like the most about him. He's too nice sometimes. I have to be the bad guy because he can't say no to anybody."

Jermain has no problem being the bad guy in the ring, however. Come Dec. 3, he intends to show Bernard Hopkins just how bad he can be.