Meldrick "TNT Kid" Taylor - pinpointing the moment the fuse was snuffed...

I translated it all

OP is right

Get ready for insults and mean guy time if you disagree

 

I absolutely agree that Taylor should never have moved up to Junior Middleweight to fight Norris. I remember when he won the Gold Medal at the 1984 Olympics he fought at Featherweight.

 

I watched him at his pro debut at MSG but couldnt remember the performance as everyone was waiting for the appearance of The Marvelous One!

 

Norris, but moving up to 147. I never saw a guy so good at 140 so bad moving up. He was just too small. Benitez had the same problem at 160. He was great at 154 and then 160 just different. Norris was a bad decision.

 

Meldrick Taylor not the only young fighter never the same after brutal fight.
Ike Ibeabuchi complained after Tua slugfest of severe headaches. And
there star never star never shined as brightly after there brutal fight.

 

The slide in to the darkness probably had seeds in the first Chavez fight . But maybe even with out that he'd have ended up getting destroyed by Norris ??

 

I've been on record saying the Chavez "beating" isn't as bad as most make out. That said, it was certainly a factor, was it the biggest factor, it's impossible to say.

 

I see there has been another eruption, we'll call it part deux

 

When he started to fade in the Chavez fight by taking too many shots because he was getting caught out of position very easily.

 

I disagree. Ike knocked out the unbeaten Chris Byrd after his win against Tua. In many ways it was even better than the Tua win because Byrd was so quick and skillful. He displayed even better ring generalship than in his win over Tua. Byrd would later go on to defeat Vitaly Klitschko and win a version of the world title.

 

I don't think it's a 'one or the other' kind of deal. A few fights played a big part in Taylor being on the scrap heap by the time he was 26 years old - Chavez started it, Norris finished it, Espana made it clear to the world. But I still think that if you want to give one fight more credence than the others, it has to be the Chavez one. Those close to Taylor (at least from what I've seen) have stated that, right away, they could see something had been taken from him and he never quite got to grips with the loss, and I'm happy to take them at their word. Moreover, Taylor admitted that he spent the following weeks / months torturing himself over it, watching it over and over again in his own company and trying to come to term with how close he'd come to his crowning glory before falling agonizingly short.

'Tis an interesting point about his weight, though. He claimed that before the Chavez fight that he and Duva had decided already that this was going to be his last fight at 140, win lose or draw. Before fighting Davis in 1991, he told Sports Illustrated, "This is my weight - 147. I had a lot of trouble making 140 lb. Against Chavez, I fought the last three rounds dehydrated. I fought those rounds on heart alone." But he wasn't the tallest, had a stocky build with short arms, didn't have one-punch knockout power and was too gung-ho to have a great defence, so I think he was always going to struggle at Welter regardless. Even if he'd never fought Chavez, I believe he might well have been on the end of an absolute tanning against someone like Espana eventually, simply because he was a bad match-up physically for a guy built like Taylor who was too brave for his own good. Just thank the good dude that Quartey or Trinidad never got their hands on him.

And there'll never be a genius born who could make sense of the decision to fight Norris at that point, given the weight hop (even with a catchweight) and how horrendous he'd looked against Glenwood Brown in his previous outing....

 

I was talking about the damage this fight added to Ike fragile psyche. This demons
that tormented Ike after the Tua fight got worse and led to him being locked up.

 

No Ike was always a disturbed but a great excellent fighter. My point is he was an even better fighter after defeating Tua and improving. I have it on good authority that Lennox Lewis’s handlers were not keen on him facing Lewis.

 

Chavez haters/Taylor fans can say whatever they like but the fact is Chavez ruined him, case closed.