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

Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

5 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Mekhrubon-Sanginov-whose-Heroism-Nearly-Proved-Fatal-Returns-on-Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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