the ghost who walks

That’s what I like about boxing! Here we have Jermain Taylor the man who beat the man facing the undefeated small town slugger in Kelly Pavlik and making Pavlik look bad when, pow, Pavlik nails him and Taylor goes down. That’s the thing about this sport – that unpredictability, that moment when it can all turn around. Taylor was dominating Pavlik, hell he damn near had him gone in round two (and I’m sure there will be many an argument that it should have been stopped) and he was showing his skill, his speed, his style (and about time) but Pavlik had heart, guts and an obvious belief in himself. You just have to look at the way he came out for the third round. Most boxers after getting put down so heavily in the previous round would have been cautious, dancing, holding, just trying to get their head back together, but not “the ghost” he comes out swinging, showing Taylor that he wasn’t intimidated, wasn’t hurt, that he wanted to continue brawling. We can say lucky punch, bad ref, he never should have been there, whatever but admit it, the middleweight division is exciting again isn’t it? Taylor’s last couple of fights did nothing for him or boxing – hell, Spinks beat him, Wright got a dubious draw, Hopkins beat him first time round – he needed to step up and for six rounds he did look the goods, maybe a loss is what he needed too. And Pavlik well he’s the American small town dream. Still with his original trainer, a brawler, one punch power, exciting and willing to take them all on. Now the question is, how long will he be the champ? Would Taylor take him out in a rematch? Hell, would Taylor want to fight him that way again or will he be smart and stay out of his way? (assuming they have a rematch – Pavlik might want an easy defense first). Whatever goes down, boxing is getting exciting – the fights we want are happening in the smaller divisions, Sam Peters is at least making the big boys look like they have potential and the trinkets are becoming less important all the time. (I mean ask yourself – who are the other middleweight champs? And how did they get the belts… did they beat Taylor?) It dragged there for awhile (hence the emptiness of this blog) but now, shoot, now we got some fun happening again.