Jermain Taylor, Unrequited Love and the Unforgiving March of Time

Published

11 years ago

October 11, 2014

Jermain Taylor never graduated from high school, and he never went to college either. But he loves the University of Arkansas more than most who have degrees from there. Arkansas Razorback paraphernalia adorns his body nearly at all times. He loves the school, its sports teams and the Razorback culture.

He loves it no matter what.

Taylor, age 36, defeated Sam Soliman via 12-round decision on October 8 to become the IBF middleweight champion. It was Taylor’s first title win since defeating Cory Spinks by split decision in May 2007. Taylor twice defeated long-reigning middleweight king Bernard Hopkins two years prior to become the new face of the division albeit for a short time. He defended his titles four times in two years before losing them to Kelly Pavlik in September 2007. Before the loss, Taylor bested Hopkins in the rematch, earned a draw against Winky Wright and won decisions against Kassim Ouma and Spinks.

But most boxing fans didn’t want to see the former undisputed middleweight champion fight Soliman for the title on Wednesday. In fact, most fans don’t want him fighting at all. Most writers didn’t want to see it either, something they opined about through stories and social media banter all month leading up to the fight.

Their reasoning was sound enough. Between 2007 and 2009, Taylor suffered four losses in five fights, including three brutal knockouts at the hands of Kelly Pavlik, Carl Froch and Arthur Abraham. In the last bout of the period, Taylor was diagnosed with a cerebral hemorrhage following his Round 12 knockout loss to Abraham.

When Taylor came back to the ring in 2011, he underwent a battery of medical tests at the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. He passed them and was granted a license to fight again when the Nevada Athletic Commission’s Medical Advisory board voted 5-0 in his favor.

“I’ve seen a guy who I was with at the Olympics training camp, and he can’t even talk now,” Taylor told the New York Times’ Josh Katzowitz in 2013. “His brain swelled up, and his speech was slurred. I don’t want to be like that. But he chose his sport. I chose this sport. And I love it.”

But never mind that. Boxing doesn’t love Taylor.

Not being loved back is the worst. They call the phenomenon “unrequited love” but I think a better term might be something like “life-sucking death punch to the soul.” Or something like that. I don’t know. But I know it sucks. I’ve been there. It’s awful.

I remember the first time I saw her. Her name was Marcy (it wasn’t, but for the purposes of this story it will be). I didn’t know what to do! Literally, I was frozen in my tracks. I had no answer for Marcy’s existence. I was stunned by her. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. In boxing terms, she was Ray Robinson and I was some bum off the street with two fists and a face.

I had no hope.

I was a sophomore in high school. She was a freshman. She was in the gym that day for some kind of orientation. I don’t know. I don’t remember that part. But I remember seeing her across the room. I remember seeing her and feeling like my heart broke into a million little pieces right then and there.

I didn’t know what to do.

I didn’t say one word to Marcy that day, and I didn’t say anything to her for two years after either. What was I going to say? She was from another planet. I might as well have been an ant. Besides, I knew if I walked up to her, it’d be like she was speaking Arabic and I’d be speaking Chinese.

Even when I ended up talking to her, it was by accident. I would call her phone and hang up. I did that for two years. It wasn’t that I was building up the courage to speak to her. I didn’t have that in me. I just wanted to hear her voice. But one day she caught on to me. You see, there was a new service offered by the phone company that not everyone had yet back then. It was called Caller ID, and it showed the name and number for all incoming calls. When I was as senior, and she was a junior, Marcy had it.

I’d never heard of such a device! Clearly, this contraption was the work of the devil.

Marcy figured everything out like a little detective. She called me back and detailed to me how she deduced it. I’ll never forget the conversation. My stepsister and I shared a phone line in our house. It was listed in her name. But Marcy knew it wasn’t her. Marcy knew it was me.

Marcy was used to people falling head over heels for her. But it was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to me! Marcy was sweet about it though. She wasn’t interested in me in that way, but she was always sweet to me. She’d talk to me on the phone. She’d entertain me if I visited her at work. She’d read all the little letters I’d write to her. Marcy was always kind and warm-hearted, even if I wasn’t.

But she’d never date me, and it sucked! Oh my Lord, it was the absolute worst feeling in the world. She dated someone else. Or if she wasn’t dating him, it was someone else. Or no one. Just never me. I just wasn’t her type, and there was no convincing her otherwise.

I tried, of course. Sometimes I think I did the best I could. But like I said, I didn’t know what to do. I was too young, selfish and stupid to know what to do. We’ve all been there, in one way or another.

Anyway, I loved Marcy as much as my little heart was capable of loving anyone back then. But I didn’t know how to love. Not really. Not yet. I came from a broken home rife with all sorts of dysfunction. I didn’t know what to do, so eventually I decided I’d just pretend like I didn’t love her. And when that didn’t work, I decided to just make myself forget her. And when I couldn’t figure out how to do that, I turned to drugs for help.

That’s probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to admit to myself. I started doing drugs, something I battled for seven long years, to forget about a girl! It’s incredibly embarrassing and shows a great weakness in my character.

Drugs eventually worked, except that they didn’t. You see, Marcy always popped into my head for some reason anyway. And I didn’t remember why until almost 20 years later. I have to tell you, there’s no greater sense of loss that I’ve experienced in my life than that remembrance. Knowing that the unforgiving march of time can go on and on and on without the acknowledgment of something so important is a devastating realization.

It all seems such a waste. Obviously, the waste isn’t thinking or believing or wanting things to have worked out differently than they did between Marcy and I in the romantic realm. Marcy fell in love and got married. She has three daughters now, each as beautiful I remember her, and a husband she loves more than anything else in the world. And I fell in love, too. Rachel and I were meant to be together. When God made Rachel, he was thinking of me! I love her so much. I could not ask for a more perfect wife. We’re two peas in a pod. We’ve been married for nine years now, going on one hundred.

But Marcy was important to me, and I ignored it. I can’t get that back. I never would have known how to love Rachel if I’d never seen Marcy across room that day. I never would have known what love is without having experienced the unrequited kind first. I never would have turned out to be me if had I not met Marcy.

I could’ve been at her wedding. I could’ve seen her grow into a mother. I could’ve been there if she needed me. I could’ve just loved her anyway.

But I didn’t.

All I did was discover 20 years later that not being loved back isn’t the worst thing after all. No. The worst is denying where love exists in the first place. The worst is throwing the truth away for a lie. The worst is forsaking unrequited love for the vanity of sparing your own feelings.

Here’s what I respect about Jermain Taylor: He hasn’t done that in his love for boxing. He might have taken two years off to pout about his life. He might have made poor decisions here and there. He might never be what he could have been.

But Taylor loves boxing, and he knows something about love that I didn’t, too.

Taylor knows love isn’t dependent on reaction, but action. Love is really straightforward if you think about it. The Beatles were right: It’s easy! Where most people get love wrong is that they believe it necessitates being loved back in return. But that’s all wrong. Love doesn’t demand reciprocity. It demands respect. Not for you. But for it.

Love exists for its own sake.

Taylor might do lots of things wrong in life. I’ve only met him twice. I don’t know. I know he doesn’t throw punches in proportion to the physical tools God gave him. I know he can’t always get out the way of knockout blows. I know he might very well be a criminal in regards to pending legal matters.

But Taylor I also know that he gets this one thing right in life above all else: He loves boxing, and he keeps on loving it. No matter what, he loves it. Boxing might not love him back, but Taylor loves boxing anyway.

“A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t,” said Jack Dempsey. It’s probably the most famous quote of one of boxing’s most popular heavyweight champions ever. Taylor is now the IBF middleweight champion because he does exactly that, even when he probably shouldn’t.

Whatever there is to say in regards to other matters, I’ll tell you this about that particular piece of information: I respect and admire the hell out of that.

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Kelsey McCarson

“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Published

16 hours ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.

It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.

In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.

Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.

It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.

“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.

Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.

Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.

Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.

We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.

Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”

But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.

“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”

Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.

Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”

If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38^th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.

Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”

Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.

Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.

On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Published

3 days ago

May 6, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-The-Good-the-Bad-and-the-(mostly)-Ugly-A-Weeend-Boxing-Recap-and-More

Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.

In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.

Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.

CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.

****

Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.

Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”

And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.

Joey Archer

Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer

Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.

Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)

Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.

Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.

In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.

When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.

Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.

May he rest in peace.

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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Published

4 days ago

May 4, 2025

David A. Avila

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Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.

Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.

“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.

Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.

After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.

Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.

One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”

Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.

“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”

Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.

A real fight was happening.

Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.

Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.

In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.

“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”

Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.

In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.

“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”

Espinoza Wins

WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.

“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.

Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.

Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.

It was Espinoza’s third title defense.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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