Taylor vs. Chavez scoring

I thought the stoppage was fair, but that card was a joke.
I had Chavez winning 2 rounds going into the 12. And that was it.

 

This was my score and my musings on the fight when I scored it awhile back.

Julio Cesar Chavez v Meldrick Taylor I

Round 1: 10-9 Taylor
Round 2: 10-9 Taylor
Round 3: 10-9 Taylor
Round 4: 10-10 Even
Round 5: 10-9 Taylor
Round 6: 10-9 Taylor
Round 7: 10-9 Taylor
Round 8: 10-9 Taylor
Round 9: 10-10 Even
Round 10: 10-9 Chavez
Round 11: 10-9 Taylor
Round 12: TKO for Chavez

Total through 11 rounds: 109-102 for Taylor

I always blamed Lou Duva for this one. Taylor was obviously buzzed and it didn't take much to distract a fighter seeing birds flying about, especially a cantankerous trainer on the ring apron raving at the top of his lungs. Had Duva kept quiet, not another punch would have been thrown because he likely would have responded to Steele.

 

This is correct.

 

The night of the fight, watching it live in a crowded bar and unable to hear the commentary, I had Chavez ahead but with a lot of close rounds. When Taylor went down, my first thought was that the knockdown sealed it for Chavez. At the time, the consensus in the boxing magazines was that the outlandish card was the one that had Taylor up by 8 points, I think it was.

This fight gets more one-sided with each passing year. Personally, after watching it who knows how many hundreds of times, I haven't watched it since 2002 and have no intention of ever watching it again. But the idea that Taylor was "dominating" a fight in which he was literally beaten to a pulp makes zero sense.

 

I had Chavez winning 3 rounds up to that point.

 

The real joke was the HBO commentary, Chavez vs Taylor 1 was a very competitive fight, not the one sided schooling that so many people say it was.

 

Taylor out worked JCC pretty clearly I thought. 8-3 seems about right. Meldricks handspeed was dazzling in this fight.

But what the fight does show is how damn good JCC was. Despite being outlanded by an athletically gifted fighter at his peak and having arguably the best night of his life, Chavez was still wrecking him as the rounds went by. He was losing the battle but winning the war and Meldrick was sustaining far greater and more lasting damage than Chavez was round by round. If it was a 15 round fight then there would've been no controversy because Taylor wouldn't have made the final rounds.

 

I had Taylor way ahead the last time I scored it. I don’t think the judges’ cards should have been close.

Btw, we did a Fight of the Week on it but I don’t think I got around to rescoring it: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/fight-of-the-week-9-chavez-v-taylor-whitaker.621350/page-4

 

I had Chavez winning round 2 (close), round 10, and round 12 at the time of the stoppage. I scored round 9 even and I thought round 6 and 11 were close, although I edged them to Taylor.

But...

Chavez broke Taylor''s cheekbone near the end of round 2, and starting late in round 5 began landing occasional precision body punches. By round 8 it seems Chavez decided to take a rest round before committing himself to launch a full on trench war. Over the next three rounds Taylor fought Chavez on ground the great Mexican had prepared. Due to Taylor's frenetic pace in the early rounds, he could ill afford to devote the energy to engage the enemy on a prepared battlefield. George Benton could see where this was going, and like the soothsayer cautioning Shakespeare's Caesar, tried to reign Taylor in. But Taylor had his own ideas.

Rounds 9, 10, and 11 were brutal rounds for Taylor. He tried a last desperate gamble at the beginning of round 10 to stem the tide, a Cemetery Ridge assault into the maw of the beast. And after this high water mark, the final eight minutes of this tragedy played out to it's end, where the victor became ensconsed as the pugilistic acme of his proud country's boxing tradition, and the loser a cautionary tale of daring too greatly - a modern boxing Icarus.

 

I don't know exactly how I scored it, but I definitely had it a lot closer. If I remember correctly, if Steele hadn't stopped it, I'd have it for Taylor by 2 points I think.

 

Classic case of Taylor was winning a lot of the battles but losing the war.

 

I saw it back in the day, but just watched it again now. I only gave Chavez the 10th rd. Freakin Lou Duva told Meldrick the fight hinges on this rd during the break between the 11th and 12th rds, Benton echoed those thoughts. WTF?????? But Meldrick just stood yhere and didn't answer the ref> BUT, have you ever in you're life, EVER, seen a ref stop a fight that quick, didn't seem to even give Meldrick a second or two to answer. The only thing faster than Tayler's hands in this fight was Steel's stoppage!

 

The stoppage was fair. Meldrick had no idea where he was. He didn’t respond. The object is to render your opponent helpless and JCC did just that.