FIGHT PREVIEW: TAYLOR VS. WRIGHT

by Ron Borges

Jermain Taylor's stock rose considerably last week even though he didn't do a thing but continue to quietly prepare for his June 17 title defense against a sly old fox with an unusual nickname and a perplexing boxing style.

As Bernard Hopkins was systematically taking apart light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver round by round last Saturday at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, two things became clear. The first was that Hopkins remains a brilliant strategist and a skillful fighter even at the advanced age of 41. The other was that young Jermain Taylor had done much more with Hopkins than it first appeared in his two close victories over him last year.

The dawning of that reality will do nothing but aid Taylor this weekend when he enters the highly partisan FedEx Forum in Memphis, an hour's drive from his home in Little Rock, Ark., to face a boxing master, Winky Wright. Taylor is younger, bigger, stronger, has the homecourt advantage and now has had verified that he fared even better against Hopkins than many of his critics had given him credit for after he won two close and highly disputed decisions from him, all advantages he will need to penetrate Wright's defensive fortifications.

None of those things will, in and of themselves, solve the riddle of Wright's mystifying barricades but they should at least bolster Taylor's confidence going into what seems likely to be a difficult stylistic challenge for the middleweight champion, who has never faced the kind of opponent he will be up against this time.

"The Hopkins fight was a situation where I had to take the title from him,'' Taylor said this week. "It was really my first fight on the big stage and it got to me a little bit. This fight with Winky, I'm the world champion and he has to come in here and take my title from me so my approach and mindset is different than before.

"I'm a lot more relaxed. I'm taking more control. I feel like I'm a better fighter (than he was before first facing Hopkins). With Emanuel Steward (who has taken over Taylor's preparation for this fight from former head trainer Pat Burns) I'm back to using my skills and speed more, rather than just using my strength.''

Against Wright, Taylor will have to use all the impressive athletic skills he possesses because his challenger is arguably the best defensive boxer in the sport but one not solely a captive of that posture. As he proved 13 months ago when he tore apart Felix Trinidad, first frustrating him with his defensive skills and then hurting him with his offensive ones, Winky Wright is a master craftsman in a brutal enterprise.

Wright's southpaw style would make him difficult under any circumstances but it is combined with a defense his trainer, Dan Birmingham, has compared to Fort Knox because "Nobody gets in.'' He has a dangerous and stinging jab to go with that defensive prowess, a jab that he has used to keep off balance some of the best fighters in the world, including Trinidad and Shane Mosley. All of that is ably backed by enough power to break Trinidad's nose and stop Mosley in his tracks time and again in their two fights. As he admits himself, "I'm not the best at anything but I do everything well. I got the whole package.''

Few would dispute that these days. Wright has taken the hard road to glory as well as the backroads of boxing and what that has produced is not only a highly skilled fighter but also a hard man who will not be easily flustered by Taylor's youth, size and impressive athleticism in the ring.

Not even Taylor's jab, which is long and stinging when thrown effectively, cowers Wright, who would argue his jab is the equal of anyone in boxing.

What that confluence of youthful skill and ageless guile has created is a title fight filled with intrigue and doubt, doubt over who will dominate the other's will and intrigue over whether either man can break the spirit of the other because that is what it will come down to for a winner to emerge.

Will the young Taylor become frustrated and confused by the difficulties of hitting Wright's elusive target? Will that lead him into the kind of over aggressive mistakes a boxer-puncher like Wright has so often capitalized on in the past?

Or has Wright lost a step, as he appeared to in the second Mosley fight and again against Sam Soliman in his last outing? In both fights Wright was dominant and in control when he was focused on his business but in each case he also got hit more often than in earlier matches. At 34, that immediately brings to mind the question of whether Wright has begun to slip a bit for he is right at the age where that can begin to happen. If he has, the superior strength, size and youth of Taylor could offer him problems for which he has no solution this time. That is the fascination of this match. Will youth prevail or will the older but wiser fighter triumph once again as he did when his chances finally came on the big stage with Trinidad and Mosley?

Wright, like Taylor, believes he knows the answer this time just as he has so often seemed to have all the answers in the past no matter whom he was in the ring with. The former junior middleweight champion looks at Taylor and doesn't dispute his obvious physical advantages and youth. He accepts them but quickly thereafter discounts their usefulness to the champion once all is said and done.

"He is bigger,'' Wright conceded. "So what? We aren't wrestling. My last opponent (Sam Soliman) was bigger (and Wright won easily though at times sloppily after, he says, battling the flu as well as Soliman). It doesn't matter. I been fighting and beating whoever they put in front of me, no questions asked, for a long time. My plan is to dominate the fight. That way I don't have to worry about the judges.''

To do that Wright must be able to avoid Taylor's jab, find his own safe punching range and be confident enough in his defense to attack without fear of being countered. He will also have to find ways to compensate for Taylor's athleticism, which is perhaps his greatest gift and if he is a step off, or perhaps even a half step off, that may be more difficult than he anticipates.

To dominate as he has promised, Wright must control his opponent with the skillful use of his own right jab and by using angles and his unusually long arms to frustrate Taylor when he tries to launch an assault on him.

Nothing can be more disappointing then for a young fighter to attack round after round and hit nothing but air and an opponent's arms and gloves. Over time that can have a corrosive effect on a fighter's psyche, especially if he is regularly getting popped in the face for his trouble.

That was Trinidad's great problem with Wright and Tarver's with Hopkins and what resulted in both cases were opponents who became a frozen mannequin, unable to decipher the code to breakthrough and deliver telling blows. For a young fighter like Taylor, who says he intends to be aggressive with Wright, that could become a particularly vexing problem because nobody simply walks through Winky Wright.

Once that realization hits, Taylor may have to make adjustments he's neither used to nor comfortable with. If he refuses to act however, Wright could make it a very long night for a young champion who as yet has no idea what defeat feels like in the prize ring.

"He's awkward,'' Taylor says of Wright, "but everyone knows he has very good defense. It's very hard to get through his defense but Emanuel Steward has put together a good game plan that I feel real good about.

"Everything will work off the jab. I think I have one of the best jabs in boxing and with Emanuel teaching I've learned how to use it more effectively. I'll be busy all night with my jab.''

Taylor will have to be but slamming it through Wright's high-handed defense will be a problem like one he's never faced before. Perhaps that will lead him to attack Wright's body to try and bring those hands down and open him up for the jab and straight rights behind it. The problem there is that Wright's arms are so long and his defense so textbook perfect one finds few openings from his ears to his pants pockets on which to land any effective blows.

Appraised of that reality, Taylor sounded cockily confident, a double-edged sword that could either work for him or deflate him entirely if Wright begins to frustrate his plans and smother his jab or take it away from him entirely early in the fight.

"I'm not worried about his defense or his jab,'' Taylor (25-0) said. "I'm going to be very aggressive and dictate this fight with my own jab. I have a couple of new moves to counter his jab that I've learned from Emanuel Steward. I'm going to be using a lot of my skills in this fight, something I kind of got away from. It won't be all about my strength.''

It had best not be because that is unlikely to be a fight Taylor could win. Steward believes because Wright tends to walk in with his hands high that Taylor will be able to bang away with his superior strength and create a pace difficult for the older fighter to keep up with as the rounds pass. He believes he has begun to see the corrosive effect of age on Wright, the lost half step, the occasional stiffness at times when he tries to slip punches, the fading at the end of the Solimon fight in his last outing.

Steward may be right about those things but his fighter had best not be relying on them and his youth to be the only answers he needs because if he is he is sadly mistaken. Jermain Taylor is in with a most difficult challenger Saturday night, one who is hard to hit and harder to beat.

Wright will not be as passive as Hopkins was in their two meetings. He will not wait so long to begin fighting that he gives away half the rounds before he begins to launch his own offensive. He instead will be what he is. He will be Winky Wright, a difficult puzzle to solve.

"I'm ready for this fight,'' Wright insists. "I'm looking forward to it. I think they're underestimating my skills. I'm good at a lot of things.''

He's good at offense, better at defense and remarkable at meeting a challenge and finding ways to win when the world doubts him.He has been doing that ever since he turned pro for a $300 payday in a hotel in Tampa 16 years ago and it will be no different Saturday night at the FedEx Forum. The payday will be but what he brings to the arena will not.

He will be there to teach Jermain Taylor what he believes boxing is all about - the art of hitting without being hit. If he pulls it off, there'll be a new middleweight champion before morning. But if he is a half-step slow, a half-step off from what he was against Mosley and Trinidad, it will be Winky Wright who is taught a lesson, one as old as boxing itself. Nobody beats the calendar so if it turns out Wright is fighting both that and Jermain Taylor he's in trouble.

But if the fight is simply one against two men, the hometown favorite will have to be on his game like never before else Winky Wright will end up on his throne.