Can Someone explain to me how Jermain Taylor can beat a master boxer like Hopkins twice who is univerally revered for his skill and ring smarts and is on a level with any MW in history. And Taylor can also beat or at least match a number of very good boxers like Ouma and Spinks as well as match a legend like Winky and yet he is completely battered into submission by two very limited fighters in Pavlik, and even more shockingly, Froch. It just doesn't make sense to me. I know styles make fights but surely not to the extent that a guy can beat legends with the styles to baffle almost anyone in Hopkins and Wright and yet is completely vulnerable to crude one dimensional fighters like Pav and Froch. It's just hard to fathom.
He had just enough stamina to take care of business at the time!!! A couple of yrs later, not enough gas in the tank!!!!!
styles make fights, hopkins doesn't push the fight and will give you some time off, Froch and Pavlik didn't give him any time off in rounds.
Yeah, jrch is onto it. Taylor is world class in terms of skill and athleticism, but he needs to be able to control the tempo. In a way, he reminds me of Wlad. Take away the tempo (or the distance, in Wlad's case) and you can make very serious trouble for him. Hopkins was old, had become tight at the weight, and was boxing carefully. So Taylor was able to pick it out, according to the judges.
Its all about the pace of the fight with Taylor, that and questionable scoring in previous fights, and the fact that his stamina is declining. Andrade would probably stop Taylor as well, is Andrade as good as Hopkins? No.
Another salient point; Taylor is the definition of an 'athlete'; he's a pure speed/strength/reflexes fighter; at 30 he might already be significantly past his best.
