Number 2 Middleweight of the Decade: Pavlik or Taylor

I scored that fight 3 times and came up with the same 3 scores as the judges. Lots of rounds that were hard to score. JT did a good job of trying to steal rounds with late flurries, but ya judge rounds on the full 3 minutes.:yep

 

Close call but I'll go with Pavlik, he did knock out Taylor in their actual meeting. Taylor has those two Hopkins wins and a draw with Winky which are big results but most think he lost to Winky and atleast one of the Hopkins fights. I'd say you've got Pavlik with two big wins in Taylor and Miranda while Taylor was 2-0-1 in his three big fights but with question marks. I'd put Taylor's wins over Spinks and Ouma ahead of Pavlik's wins over the likes of Rubio and McKart but those aren't as significgant and don't carry the same weight. Pavlik was undefeated but Taylor fought higher level of competition and won the head to head fight. A case can be made for either but I'll side with Pavlik.

 

Jermaine probably is.... he beat Hopkins twice... what more can i say

 

anyone know why the pav/taylor rematch clause in the contract was at a catchweight?? i feel like there was still a lot taylor could have done at mw had he decided to stay.

in the promos for the super six fighers, they were following jt around and jt was commenting on how his diet was very strict for the aa fight. he said he never used to worry about what he ate but now he had a nutritionist, etc. that indicates to me that whatever weight problems he was having at mw may have been his own doing and had he really wanted to he could have stayed at mw.

just a thought.

 

to be fair, kelly's second win over jt and aa's second win over miranda were over the mw limit. and also to be fair, joppy was a good win for taylor and zuniga and zertuche were solid wins for kelly.

 

In my opinion there were a number of rounds in that fight that came down to ring generalship; ie JT looked fantastic, but KP looked like the man in charge.

 

How legit is that mandatory shot that Lockett earned? My memory was that they had to trump up Locketts ranking to make the fight look legit, but they were just using it try to set up a Pavlik/Calzaghe fight?

From what I remember at the time everybody was describing Lockett's call up for a shot as a shock. Didn't the WBC even have to scramble to enter him in their rankings so they could sanction that as a WBC defense also?

 

Hmmm i would say its a toss up but Taylor would have to take this one.
Pavlik has just been fighting bums lately and whats worse is that they are on PPV. It seems after Taylor PAvlik hasnt really taken on big risks other than Hops.

 

There was definitely a degree of contrivance to get him the shot, but he still had better credentials than the crowd that were supposedly stellar wins for AA. And, importantly, he was a mandatory, howsoever arising; Pavlik didn't choose to fight him like AA chose Oral and Simon.

 

ed: yes the lockett fight was in anticipation of a calzaghe fight.

saul: point taken sir...but **** that's a pretty big risk moving up over the smw limit to fight hopkins

 

But Taylor beat Hopkins twice and Hopkins is number one.

 

He actually tried to get the first fight with Pavlik at a friggen catch weight. So, I'd say he was having trouble making weight.