Im watching Chavez beat Dwight Prattchet for his 130 title and Prattchet gives a decent account. Crowds Chavez for the first 6 and gives him problems with letting shots of. Has a big heart and very solid fundamentals, never stops throwing punches for the most part. Looking at his record this guy lost to Meldrick Taylor in his 2nd pro fight. Thats impressive to me feeding someone this tough to a guy in his second pro fight for a 6 rounder. Despite Taylor being so young his management had so much confidence in him. I wish we saw people like Danny Jacobs in with guys like this- often its older cubans with hundreds of amateur fights who get this kind of competition this early on. I mean Taylor was what 17-18 fighting a guy who lost a competitive fight against Juan Laporte in his previous fight. Thoughts?
I'm not confident at all at Taylor being an ATG, Chavez or not. Really, what happens that much different? The guy had weight problems at 140, so he moves up to 147. He beats Davis for the WBA belt, but the division is about to become loaded. Whitaker, Tito, Ike, Brown, even Espana would've always given Taylor problems with his style and size. Taylor lacked size and power at WW, but was still always too prone to trading. His team obviously was the type to let him take on serious challenges, so he'd probably be taking on the divisions best. The punishment would add up. He was always going to be one of those excellent fighters who had a short stay at the top
Taylor's management was not one to protect him. Taylor had 20 pro fights and fought McGirt, who had twice as many. 5 fights later, Taylor fought Chavez, who had 68 pro fights, almost a quarter of them being world title bouts. Once instance in when Team Taylor should have been protective of him, was when they let him fight Terry Norris at a catchweight of 150 and a half. I think they shamelessly cashed out on Taylor in that instance.
I parallel Trinidad-Vargas to Chavez-Taylor 1. Vargas and Taylor being the undefeated American champs with the good amateur background, who fought hard-hitting, undefeated Latino champs who won titles in 3 divisions (2 at the time for Tito) and whom had much more experienced. Both were classic fights which ended in 12th round TKOs for the more experienced champs. Both fights took something out of Vargas & Taylor. They had some decent wins and good performances afterwards (more so for Taylor, who had the 2nd best win of his career against Davis). Both of them generally took a lot of punishment in general. Taylor obviously fought on too long, and Vargas may be headed that same way, as I hear he's having money problems and possibly planning a comeback.
