There are few things casual and serious boxing fans agree about. In January, casual fans helped Roy Jones and Felix Trinidad pull off a box office surprise. Serious fans, meanwhile, think that if Jones and Trinidad split $20 million, Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez deserve that much, each, for their March rubber match.
After a May 5 tune-up, Oscar de la Hoya expects casual fans to rally for his September rematch with Floyd Mayweather. Casual fans probably will deliver “even half of what our first fight made” to Oscar and Floyd. The missing half of pay-per-view buys, though, will come from serious fans – who are somewhere between uninterested and resentful about Mayweather-De la Hoya II.
But if there’s one thing casual and serious fans can agree on, it’s a Las Vegas superfight for the undisputed middleweight championship of the world – even if it doesn’t involve middleweights.
Saturday night at MGM Grand, Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor will make a highly anticipated rematch of their September fight for the middleweight title. If that sentence looks a bit awkward, blame the fighters’ handlers. Specifically, blame whichever handler stipulated the rematch had to happen at 166 pounds.
Pavlik-Taylor II will not be for the middleweight title. Pavlik will remain champ regardless of the fight’s outcome. But that should dissuade no one who’s considering purchasing the fight. This will be the one rematch in 2008 that you should pay $50 to see.
Last week, Taylor and Pavlik conducted pre-fight conference calls. There were no stirring revelations, of course. About the only thing we learned was something we already knew: Pavlik and Taylor are both good, hard-working guys. Sports would be wealthier if we had more athletes like them.
But among the calls’ non-stirring revelations was this: Jermain Taylor is in the best shape of his life. Sounds familiar. We heard the same thing before Taylor’s last fight – when trainer Manny Steward moved camp from Arkansas to the Poconos.
Truth is, we hear this before every fight from every fighter – well, save Hector Camacho Jr. If someone’s conditioning is less than optimal, we’ll not hear about it till afterward. Look, even James Toney, about to fight 50 pounds over his prime weight, promised us great conditioning.
Taylor surely believes he is in the best shape of his life. Taylor surely believed he was in the best shape of his life in September. Taylor’s conditioning really isn’t the point, though. The point is that Taylor thinks his conditioning is the point.
And that’s a problem.
Like most gifted athletes, Taylor supposes that if he’s fit, natural ability will take care of the rest. Conditioning is important in boxing, sure. But at the championship level, it’s also a given. Conditioning wasn’t the decisive factor for Taylor against Pavlik in September.
In Round 2, Taylor had Pavlik in real trouble. He also had about 90 seconds to land a final blow. There has never been a champion whose stamina was ruined by 90 seconds of punching. And Taylor’s wasn’t.
The problem for Taylor was technique. Instead of hurling hooks like a maniac, he needed to throw an uppercut or two. From the corner, Steward pleaded with Taylor to do just that. But Taylor, under a spell of his own aggressiveness, may not even have heard Steward.
For the rematch, then, Taylor has dropped Steward, reunited with his old coach and done more roadwork. It’s as if Taylor thinks his failure the first time wasn’t with winging hooks in the second round but with not winging them in the third.
There were two reasons Taylor didn’t imperil Pavlik again after Round 2 in their first fight. But they weren’t Steward and stamina. They were Pavlik’s left jab and Pavlik’s right cross.
From the beginning, Pavlik jabbed Taylor effectively. And before Taylor attributes his knockout loss to fatigue, he should remember than even while both fighters were fresh, he got hit by Pavlik’s right cross – the middleweight division’s most devastating punch.
That was the fight’s biggest surprise. Tall, gangly and slow, Pavlik was never supposed to find Taylor in the opening rounds. There’s an interesting thing about Pavlik’s punches, though: They arrive sooner than expected.
It’s a calculation every fighter does in the opening moments of a bout. He measures an opponent’s height, reach and shoulder width. He plugs this data into an algorithm and determines how long he’ll have from the moment he knows a punch is thrown till the punch actually arrives. But against Pavlik, opponents’ calculations tend to be wrong.
That’s because of the late movement Pavlik’s right cross has. It’s what is meant by a punch’s “snap.” The right cross begins with the palm facing its fighter’s cheek and ends with the palm facing the mat. As the right arm extends, the right wrist uncoils. The later this uncoiling occurs, the greater acceleration the punch will have.
Pavlik does not uncoil his right wrist till the very end. And the acceleration of Pavlik’s cross happens after a point at which his opponents can decide what to do with the oncoming punch. This is how Pavlik’s right cross arrives sooner than expected.
Late movement on a punch is hard to see on television, though. It’s also hard to see at ringside. Fortunately, Pavlik has a way of alerting us when he’s properly landed the cross. He pulls his hand back from the punch higher than usual, and he flips his wrist like he’s cracking a whip overhead.
When you see that, something devastating has just happened. But watch closely, because you’re unlikely to see it more than four times before a Pavlik knockout.
On Saturday, could Taylor bring effective intensity enough to stop Pavlik? Yes. Could Taylor decision Pavlik over 12 rounds? Possibly. Are these probable outcomes? No. Then I’ll take Pavlik: KO-5.