What's with all this talk about Jermain Taylor being a fraud?

ALL I got to say is I loved seeing him get KO'D by PAvlik it was a thing of beauty

 

I don't think he's a fraud; I just don't like the ****.

Just don't like to see a non-boxing fan, who admits he's just in it for the money, get border-line dodgy calls against living legends who love the sport like B-Hop and Winky, just because HBO or whoever has a vested interest in hyping the **** out of him.

I'm sure he isn't a bad person or anything, he just isn't skilled enough to get in my good books after some of the **** he has come off with ("I'm not a fan; I don't watch the fights" and "I'll just go were the money is" - **** ME!!! I'm sure there are some boxers who might think this way, it would be naive to say there wasn't, but saying it out loud shows a total lack of respect for the fans - he should know when to keep his mouth shut).

If he was ATG material I could probably forgive him anything. There are a lot of great fighters who have been absolute ****s, but it doesn't stop me tuning in to watch them. However, he isn't an ATG, and probably never will be.

What can I say? I'm a hypocrite...so is every person.

 

For me, my distaste towards him had to do in part with his supposed victories that should have been losses or at the very least draws. I'm a fan who thinks more along the lines that a champion needs to be defeated in sound fashion to lose a belt.

(the whole one way or the other thing with dethroning a champ, some fighters can eek out a victory by not producing a dominant victory, while at other times a fighter has to convincingly win, when which standard appears is a problem with boxing)

Secondly, his progress as a fighter.. He essentially is the same fighter now that he was when he had 18 victories. A guy with a ton of raw talent who hadn't shown improvement under the guidance of a guy like Emanuel Steward. Same rawness regardless of who trains him, all the potential, seemingly none of the hard work..

So he ended up being a guy willing to fight the best, but never showed any improvement, and gained some shady victories over guys who deserve a lot more respect as fighters.. To me this was almost a blatant marketing ploy to promote a guy with a lot of potential, who never ended up living up to his potential.. The longer he went undefeated, the more it showed.

Its not his fault. I admire him the same way I admire Shane Mosely.. Guy willing to fight whoever.. But in his case, he is a victim of the marketing aspect of boxing.. He showed a lot of potential so he seemed to get several nods, benefits of the doubt over fighters who's status quo were never even tested. Bernard Hopkins and his amount of title defenses down the drain because some new potentially marketable fighter came along really upset me. Sometimes you need to take the fight away from the judges, but legacies should not be destroyed because of the marketability of fighters.. To much lies on the records of fighters these days..

 

Nobody who fights three close fights back to back with p4p no 1 and 2 can be a fraud whether he won/lossed/drew them.

 

Exactly. It is one of the great injustices of boxing history that HBO STOLE Hopkins title for their latest hype job. If it wasn't for Hopkins unpopularity with the boxing establishment, and HBOs power, Bernard would have gotten the nod, no doubt. It's shameful, really. And the evidence was compounded when you saw Taylor get extremely questionable verdicts in his next two fights.

"Winning" fights that he should have lost, because of his CONNECTIONS to a powerful television network, is what makes Taylor a fraud, pure and simple. Once you could explain it away, but three times?? No WAY.

 

So for the people saying that the main reason why you don't like him is because he got the gift decisions over Hopkins and Winky, would your opinion of him change if he had gotten maybe a loss or two against them? Whatever the case, you can't dispute the fact that he was very competitive against two of the top P4P fighters in the world at the time no matter how "raw" he was. And doesn't that say a lot in itself?

But right now, i think most people see him for what he is. A guy who is beatable but also a guy who has the potential to beat anyone. He comes to fight and will exchange. He's good for boxing in that sense and in the sense that he will fight the best. Can the same be said for other top fighters?

 

hell no Calzaghe padded his entire career