TAYLOR VS. HOPKINS 2 AFTERMATH

December 5, 2005 - by Ron Borges

Jermain Taylor was hoping to make a statement about his future Saturday night against former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins and he did but it was neither a loud one nor a clear one. It was a statement in the form of a question: What happened?

After winning the undisputed 160-pound title from Hopkins in disputed fashion when they first met five months ago, Taylor came to the Mandalay Bay Events Center on Saturday declaring he was going to leave no doubt about who was the superior fighter. "I'll make you respect me,'' Taylor promised Hopkins during the pre-fight hype but although he found a way to win once again that larger goal was not met. More importantly, neither was the one of making a clear statement of his superiority over Hopkins and the other middleweights now clamoring to get a shot at him.

Chief among those will be Winky Wright if he survives his match with Sam Soliman this Saturday night on HBO, a bout in which, if he can look dominate, Wright can stake his own claim to deserving a shot at a young champion who has now gone 24 rounds with a 40-year-old man and failed to prove he is his clear superior.

"I give nothing but respect to Bernard Hopkins,'' Taylor (25-0) said after winning a unanimous decision by the thinnest of margins (115-113) on all three judge's cards. "He fought very well tonight. He's proven he's a tough fighter and a true champion. But right now I am the champion and I feel like I'm the champion. I knew I was going to win. I thought I won the fight.''

Those seemed like odd words coming from someone who has now been awarded two victories over a guy who held the middleweight title for the past decade but that is all Taylor was left with after barely defeating Hopkins on a night where Hopkins repeated his odd strategy of five months ago, when he simply chose not to fight until the fight was half over.

Certainly Hopkins is the best middleweight of his time but his time now seems to clearly have passed. Although still one of the smartest fighters in boxing, Hopkins has lost two straight in the same fashion looking most of the night like someone who no longer had much interest in taking a risk. At his age, knowing this was very likely his last major fight that is not all that unusual. But what was Taylor's reasoning for being equally as cautious?

What the two Hopkins fights made clear is that despite his obvious physical gifts, Taylor still has much to learn. His skills remain considerable but raw as garlic. He continues to be hit with lead right hands and has little knowledge of how to fight effectively on the inside, which is one reason his handlers would be wise to stay away from Wright for the time being for he is as skilled and crafty as Hopkins and younger and potentially more dangerous.

Taylor may not agree with that but his next fight will more than likely be on HBO World Championship boxing back in his hometown of Little Rock, Ark., a place Wright is not likely to venture. He may even try to fight twice more before accepting a challenge from the former junior middleweight champion who destroyed Felix Trinidad and Shane Mosley.

However long he can delay such a meeting while he learns the intricacies of his trade would be time well spent. Yet Taylor remained insistent that he is ready for all comers.

"I'll fight anybody; it doesn't make a difference,'' Taylor said. "If Bernard wants to fight me again, we can do it. In the sport of boxing, anything can happen.''

Anything but that. After two fights between them in five months that were underwhelming at best, there is no public outcry for a rubber match and no need for one with the pattern now well established between them.

What would make a third fight different from the first two?

It is in Taylor's best interest then to move on while Hopkins seemed to hint that if he fights again before turning 41 next month it will be a swan song venture in Philadelphia or Atlantic City, where he fought so many times during his career. A grand goodbye to a sport that changed his life.

"I want everybody to understand that Bernard Hopkins tonight, being one month shy of 41, put on a twelve round exhibition,'' Hopkins said. "I don't have to be ashamed of what happened tonight. I think that I did enough to prove that I'm still the champion. Jermain Taylor proved that he can put on a lion-like performance but there are champions and there are people's champions. I don't think I get the right type of respect, the type of respect that I won't get until I die. But I have proven that I always win the battles in the long run.

"I used to always wear ice packs at press conference when I was younger but I don't use them anymore. I don't know if that means that I'm so much better at ducking punches or what, but you can know that I don't use them because I was running. I think after all the years that after reviewing my fights, especially these two fights with Jermain, that I will be considered among the top middleweights and my fights will be mentioned along with all the other great middleweight fights in history.

"Right now Taylor is probably the best middleweight but will Jermain Taylor do for the next ten or so years what I did? I don't think you or I will be alive if that ever happens again, and that is nothing against Jermain, but we're talking about ten plus years, twenty plus defenses. I don't think that anyone will ever pass my record in my lifetime.''

Time will tell about that. For now Taylor has to be content leaving with both victory and his face pretty much intact. Despite having won all those championship belts from Hopkins, Taylor did not fight like a young man convinced of his superiority. Rather he fought like someone who had learned to be wary of an old lion who had done so much damage to him when the two last found themselves at close quarters. Taylor even alluded to that and the problems it caused him while trying to explain his oddly cautious performance.

"The difference in this fight was he respected me more,'' Taylor claimed. "He's a very clever fighter. He's very difficult to hit. You have to be careful with him. I believe I did enough to win the fight. I'm taking the belts back to Arkansas. But Bernard is a very tough man and I have to give him respect. He's tough to really hit cleanly. You have to work to get him.''

Now that he twice has, Jermain Taylor can go back home and work on his weaknesses, gradually gaining strength for the challenge he knows is ahead. The one Winky Wright is readying for him every day.