Great chat guys.
Chavez-Taylor One (there was a rematch)was certainly a gem of a fight. This fight is worth it's rant in gold. Do what you have to and find it somewhere. You'll be a better fan for it.
Trojan Horse makes a good argument and revealed things I didn't know, but I have to agree more so with ElDuque here. Taylor was the quicker puncher but Chavez was the much harder puncher. Taylor did dominate the earlier rounds with his speed and flare, but what many forget was, even in those early round where Taylor seemed to be dominating, Chavez was certainly hurting Taylor slowly with many brutal head and body blows that went unnoticed by many at ringside and on tele because of Taylor's showmanship. Chavez was slowly but surely brutalizing Taylor throughout the 12 rounds. Whether this eventually proved Taylor's downfall or not is a matter of opinion. My opinion is it did.
Meldrick Taylor urinated pure blood for two full days following this fight. Pure.His kidney's and liver were full of blood upon medical inspection at the ER among many other internal organproblems. Chavez simply bashed this young man from no-return.He was both a battered and bruised young man. This fight left Taylor with severe brain bruising which he still sufferes from, and displays in his speeech even to this day. If you had of seen Taylor before this fight, he was a brash young man full of confidence and life (much in the Roy Jones Jnr league). Today though,Meldrick Taylor has a severe speech inpediment with next to no co-ordination in his actions,and a wayward gait. It is a real sad sight. It was this fight directly which paved the way for MT's current sad state of health. It brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it. Sincerely.
I agree that this fight did ruin Taylor's career, in many ways,but I don't believe it was only Steele's fault. On one hand he should have let Taylor win the belt/fight and not stop it as the kid did deserve it, but the flipside is he may just have saved Taylor's life by doing so. We'll never know. Thankfully for the sake of the later. That's all I'll add.
To those who may wonder where Meldrick Taylor is now.....
Where are they now?
Meldrick Taylor
Two Seconds to Glory April 12, 2003
It doesn't sound right, but some prizefighters are pacifists. They make their living in the ring, and probably they're not too happy about it, but they do it because they're good at it and can make a few bucks so what the hell. They take care not to do much damage while they're in there and they don't risk much either. They want to get in, do their thing, hope no one gets hurt and then get out and pay some bills.
There are those too, thankfully, who are on the other side -- who fight because it's what they love to do. They need that hard contact: gloves cracking against jawbone, skulls banging together, the blood in the eyes, the thrill of the pain and the exhilaration at the brutal end. If they didn't need money to live they'd be just as happy fighting for nothing.
It is one of nature's better jokes that neither temperament is bound to an appropriately corresponding set of talents. Roy Jones, for example, has the weaponry to have stopped every professional fighter he's ever faced and a good number he hasn't. But as far as fighters go, he's a pacifist. So he lets guys hang around. That's him.
You can say Meldrick Taylor was the opposite of Jones even if it gives the wrong impression. But he was. He had fast hands and good wheels, too. He could box and move and barely get hit when he was in the mood to do it that way. He wasn't a big hitter. He never was. But he fought a lot of the time like he was. He loved the rumble. He loved the action. That's what got him going.
"I didn't like to box all the time," Taylor said recently. He's 36 now and only semi-retired from the ring, but more on that later. "It was too boring. I wanted to get in there and mix it up. Maybe I was too brave for my own good."
It was said often throughout Taylor's career, and particularly in the latter stages, that he had too much Philadelphia in him. You know, too much of the stuff that's been floating around in the gyms there for the past hundred years or that runs through the water and makes Philadelphia fighters too often braver and tougher and more in love with the fight than they should be.
"That might be a fair assessment," said Taylor, who more or less ended his career with a record of 38-8-1 (20). The thing is, he never really had a choice. He was all fighter, right from the start. He grew up in North Philadelphia, hoping to emulate older brother Myron, a heck of an amateur who grew into a pretty decent professional featherweight. He first put on gloves at eight years old. He proved a prodigy, winning his first national title at 15. Two years later he found himself in Los Angeles on the 1984 US Olympic team with future world champions Pernell Whitaker, Evander Holyfield and Mark Breland. In the finals, Taylor whipped Nigerian Peter Konyegwachie for the featherweight gold. He was 17 years old.
"Winning the gold medal was phenomenal," Taylor said. "I had dreamed about it for so long and then finally made it a reality. I worked so hard for it then when it happened it was surreal." Taylor signed with the Duvas and turned pro later the same year, eventually bulking all the way up to 140. He won 12 straight and his strengths were obvious: he had impossibly fast hands, and he was mobile and skilled. But he fought angry. Sometimes he fought like he had a bigger punch than he did and it got him hit when it wasn't necessary. But his chin was sturdy enough and anyway that was the way he liked to do it and you couldn't tell him otherwise.
In August 1986 Taylor drew with Olympic gold medal winner and lightweight title challenger Howard Davis Jr. It didn't slow him down. Eight fights later he challenged Buddy McGirt for the IBF junior welterweight title. McGirt, known today as one of the game's best young trainers, was 38-1-1 and making his second defense of the belt. He was a superb craftsman in the ring and had twice the number of fights Taylor did. It didn't bother Taylor.
"I had to win it because he was considered a big puncher," Taylor said. "I was the underdog. He didn't respect me. He said he would knock me out. In the first round he tried. I was in a corner and he hit me with his best punch. After that I took over with my speed. He was a very good puncher and he was very game - he kept trying the whole fight but I out-speeded him." Taylor stopped McGirt in the 12th round.
Taylor defended twice and took a couple of non-title bouts before engaging the most important fight of his career against living legend Julio Cesar Chavez. By this time Taylor had convinced many that he was among the best fighters in the world. But Chavez already was a three-division champion, owner of a 68-0 record, and the consensus best fighter pound-for-pound on the planet. More than the undisputed junior welterweight title was at stake.
"It was inevitable that we would fight," said Taylor. "He was considered the best fighter in the world and that's what I wanted to be. In order to be the best you have to beat the best. I would fight anybody. I've never backed down from anyone. I didn't feel a lot of pressure. He had much more experience than I did. And I still got a lot of respect and acclaim even though I lost."
On St. Patrick's Day 1990, Taylor and Chavez took one another to places few fighters have gone. For 11 and 3/4 rounds they struggled against defeat and against one another. Taylor was faster and more active. Chavez was more accurate and heavier-handed; by the end Taylor's face was swollen and bloody. It was a magnificent display of brutality and will and going into the final round Taylor led on two cards. He needed just to stay away and the fight was his.
He couldn't do it. It wasn't in him to. He fought the way he had all night, more or less right in Chavez' range and with about 15 seconds left Chavez landed a short right that hurt Taylor and another sent him down. He rose and turned to trainer Lou Duva, who was on the ring apron, shouting. Two seconds remained on the clock -- not enough time for Chavez even to cross the ring. Referee Richard Steele stopped it.
Today Taylor is philosophical about the loss. "I don't feel bitter at all about it. It was for a reason. Everything happens for a reason. I was never meant to beat Chavez." It was THE RING magazine's Fight of the Year and later its Fight of the Decade, too. But in the eyes of many Taylor paid a heavy price. A lot of guys will tell you he was never the same. He disputes it and makes a reasonable argument, asking how he was able, then, to go up in weight and win another world title (the WBA welterweight title from Aaron Davis). "The Chavez fight didn't ruin me," he said. One fight doesn't ruin you."
That may be. But things went downhill from there. Taylor made two unimpressive defenses of the welterweight title before junior middleweight champion Terry Norris massacred him in four rounds in a fight Taylor knew he shouldn't have taken because of the size difference. But after winning a nationally televised bout, Norris had called Taylor out. "I couldn't back down," he said. Afterward he dropped back down to defend his title and was brutally stopped in eight rounds and dethroned by hard-punching Crisanto Espana.
Taylor's last big fight was a rematch with Chavez. It happened in 1994, about four years too late. Taylor blames dueling television networks for delaying what would have been a wonderful rematch, and blames himself for losing to Chavez again. "I was using my speed early, then I decided to go punch-for-punch," he said. "We rocked one another in the sixth round but I fought the wrong fight." Chavez stopped him in the eighth.
Since then Taylor has fought sporadically and without very good results: wins over a couple of journeymen, losses to several. Almost universally within the business there is a sentiment that he shouldn't be fighting. His words tend to slur into one another. Those who have seen him in action insist his skills have seriously eroded. But Taylor remains true to himself: Obstinate. Stubborn. Proud.
"It's bogus. A lot of fighters can still fight (when they get older): George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Ray Leonard. Why is there a double standard for me? I went to Mexico and beat the shit out of that guy over there (respected journeyman Kirino Garcia, who won a decision over Taylor in February 1999). Get the tape. I won 10 out of 12 rounds but it was in his backyard so they gave it to him.
"I beat the hell out of that guy in Denmark, too (Hasan Al, who decisioned Taylor in August '98). But it was in his hometown in Denmark so they gave it to him. I busted him up and beat him up. If I'm so washed up how am I beating these guys? Why aren't these guys knocking me out? I'm losing decisions in their backyards."
Taylor last fought in July 2002, dropping a decision to prospect Wayne Martell. He says he still can beat any top-10 welterweight in the world if they give him the chance but he refuses to sell his soul "to make other guys money that want to use my name. If I don't get any TV fights I'm not fighting, because if the fights aren't on TV I'm not going to make any money. I'm not going to waste my time."
So he is semi-retired now but busy. He just finished writing his autobiography, "Two Seconds to Glory." He is a minister, has been for eight years at the Israel Church of God & Jesus Christ in Philadelphia. "We have schools and teach in all the inner cities of America." He has a website too -- meldricktaylor.com -- where you can get T-shirts and videos of some of his old fights, or even hire him as a personal fitness trainer or nutritional consultant.
He denies having regrets. "What should I regret? I did a lot of things most people never get to do. I was a two-time world champion. I fought in one of the greatest fights ever. All things happen for a reason. This is the way things go in life." He paused an inserted an afterthought: "Maybe I would have fought smarter and not played to the crowd so much. Hector Camacho said he never cared that the crowd booed him, as long as he won the fight. Maybe I should have been more like that."
Perhaps. But he couldn't be more like that. It wasn't in him. Fighters, like the rest of us, can only be every day who they are - pacifist or warrior - and there is no higher calling than that. With Taylor, there was no mistaking.
Written by:
William Dettloff
http://www.hbo.com/boxing/watn/taylor.shtml
