Jermain Taylor knows about knockout blows
BOXING
The former middleweight world champion gets a rematch Saturday with Pavlik, who took his title with a stunning seventh-round flurry five months ago. For Taylor, who grew up in poverty, it's another chance to show he 'can get back up.'
His life has been based on the ability to rise from a bad place.
So, for Jermain Taylor, picking himself up off the canvas of his first professional loss as a boxer and seeking a quick rematch makes perfect sense.
Taylor explains now that he let his training slide in preparation for his September middleweight world title defense against hard-punching, unbeaten Kelly Pavlik.
"I wasn't running like I was supposed to be, I wasn't focused like I was supposed to be," Taylor said. "To be honest, I got too comfortable, too relaxed, too confident."
When he was brutally knocked out in the seventh round, Taylor self-analyzed the question, "How could this happen?" He could salvage some encouragement in knowing he knocked down Pavlik in the second round and was close to finishing off the challenger.
"He dominated the first few rounds," Taylor's promoter, Lou DiBella, said. "His trainer had predicted a KO by the third round, and Jermain went after it."
Yet, the real motivation was found in the harder truth that was delivered convincingly without sugar-coating. Pavlik pounded Taylor into a corner and delivered a devastating uppercut that forced Taylor to collapse to the mat in Atlantic City, N.J.
"There's not a worse way to lose," Taylor said.
Taylor (27-1-1) was unbeaten no more, a world champion no longer, and left to reassess not only how he'd fallen but reflect upon how he became champion in the first place.
What he couldn't ignore as he weighed either a quick rematch with Pavlik or a move up in weight against a confidence-building lesser opponent was how those seconds slumped in the corner paralleled a childhood locked in poverty.
Dark memories, both.
"What growing up taught me was that even though you're down, you can get back up," Taylor said.
So, on Saturday night, Pavlik-Taylor II commences at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Raised in a low-income area of Little Rock, Ark., Taylor was charged with responsibilities that far exceed those of a typical pre-teen. As his single-parent mother, Carlois, worked the 3-11 p.m. shift at a nursing home, Jermain was the man of the house for his three sisters.
Sometimes, the Taylor home's natural gas would get shut off because of an unpaid bill. That meant no heat and no hot water with small children inside. Taylor said he remembers at age 8 improvising without the gas meter.
