TAYLOR VS PAVLIK – EXPECT TO SEE THE BEST OF JERMAIN
By Ron Brashear
Inside Boxing Writer/Columnist

(IB – September 24, 2007) – This upcoming Saturday night, live from Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ, and televised on HBO, Undefeated Middleweight Champion Jermain “Bad Intentions” Taylor (27-0-1, 17 KOs) of Little Rock, Arkansas will be making his 5th defense of his title when he takes on undefeated #1 contender Kelly “Ghost” Pavlik (31-0, 28 KOs) of Youngstown, Ohio.

In addition to this being a showdown between the undefeated top talents of the middleweight division, this is one of those fights that could go either way in the form of a victory for each of them.

Taylor, who is 29 years old and in his prime, is eagerly seeking the respect that he feels he rightly deserves. After all, he owns two victories over Bernard Hopkins, a draw with Winky Wright, and victories over Cory Spinks & Kassim Ouma. Although many may feel that Hopkins, in fight #2, and Wright did enough to walk away with a victory, Taylor was very much in these fights and was very competitive against these ELITE pound-for-pound contending hall of famers. Many also feel that Taylor should have been able to stop Spinks and/or Ouma since they were both Jr. Middleweights coming up in weight to challenge Taylor.

So now we come to this Saturday night. Taylor will have in front of him a very tough hard-punching 25 year old fighter that comes forward while applying a lot of pressure. Many folks in and outside of the boxing circles, view this as a very competitive even fight.

I happen to see it differently. While taking nothing away from what Pavlik has demonstrated to get to this stage of fighting for the world title, especially given the way he over-powered Edison Miranda and knocked him out in the 7th round back in May of this year, I am anticipating this fight to be a dominant performance by Taylor.

Based on all the fights I have seen Taylor in, he seems to always fight to the level of the opponent. I really believe he felt the true threat of Hopkins and Wright and therefore he applied the necessary resilience, attitude, aggressiveness, etc to stand his ground with those guys. I don’t believe Taylor felt any threat from Spinks & Ouma and he didn’t apply the level of urgency to get either of these fighters out of there.

Pavlik’s misfortune may turn out to be that he does pose a legitimate threat to Taylor as well. Jermain knows the danger in this fight and because of that, I am expecting to see the best Jermain Taylor to date. I look for Taylor to take control of this fight from the onset and not relinquish that control anytime during the fight and put on a dominating performance. While I am not so sure that Taylor will KO Pavlik, I believe the fight will be fairly easy to score. Afterwards, it will be time for Taylor to take on a different weight division. I would love to see Taylor get the winner of battle of the undefeated Super Middleweight title fight coming up in November between Calzaghe and Kessler.

If you are unable to be in the arena Saturday night in Atlantic City, be sure to tune into HBO to see this entertaining bout for yourself and you decide if Jermain “Bad Intentions” Taylor is for real or not.

You have just gone InsideBoxing.com

Ron Brashear can be contacted at brashear@insideboxing.com, ron@youthofhonor.org

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