Taylor withdraws from Super Six tournament
When former undisputed world middleweight champion Jermain Taylor announced in a statement this week that he would "take some time off" from boxing, it sounded like as good a permanent retirement announcement as the sport can get.
Taylor, famously, has never been in love with the sport which swept him to global fame and earned him millions of dollars, and at the age of 31, after two successive painful knockouts, he has picked the right time to take his leave.
Taylor is not the first famous fighter to sit uneasily with his sporting fortune. The great Sugar Ray Robinson once said: "Fighting, to me, seems barbaric. I enjoy out-thinking another man, but I still don't like to fight."
The man nicknamed "Bad Intentions" always sat a little uncomfortably in the spotlight, becoming animated only when talking about his home city of Little Rock and state of Arkansas, to which he remained fiercely loyal throughout his career. The problem with Taylor's reticence was that he always could fight like a champion. He won two national Golden Gloves titles and claimed a bronze medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Taylor's swarming, hooking style was destined to prick the ears of the pay-per-view moguls. In 2004 he rose to prominence by hammering former light-middleweight world champion Raul Marquez, followed by a shut-out over former middleweight world champion William Joppy.
The following year Taylor won the two fights which made his name. He earned a close split decision win over undisputed champion Bernard Hopkins in July 2005, the first fight Hopkins had lost in 12 years.
In December of the same year, Taylor repeated the feat against Hopkins, with all three judges scoring 115-113 for Taylor. Yet when it seemed Taylor had the world at his feet, his natural disinclination seemed to be pulling him away from his sport. Subsequent wins over Winky Wright, Kassim Ouma and Cory Spinks will go down in no-one's lists of great middleweight title fights, and the sanctioning bodies who quarrelled over his portions of title seemed to displease Taylor even more.
Taylor lost his titles and suffered his first professional defeat against Kelly Pavlik in September 2007. Unlike his previous defences, it was a fine fight and earned Taylor the chance to earn another lucrative pay-day in a rematch. But as that second chance approached Taylor's long-standing disillusionment became public.
His former trainer Emanuel Steward said;
"He doesn't read boxing magazines or go to fights. Believe it or not, he doesn't know which belts he currently holds."
Responding directly to fans' questioning his commitment on a pre-fight webcast, Taylor said;
"Boxing is a sport that I do. It is my job. I go in there and work hard every day. It is how I feed my family, so who cares if I love it or not."
Taylor added, when asked about his desire to enter the Hall of Fame;
"It is not important to me at all. I did not grow up in boxing, so it is not important to me. What is most important to me is to win every fight by any means."
After another defeat to Pavlik, Taylor moved up to super-middleweight and earned his place in Showtime's 'Super 6' series with a unanimous decision over another fading next-big-thing, Jeff Lacy. Taylor performed well in his next fight against Carl Froch and was ahead on the scorecards before being dropped and knocked out with 14 seconds remaining in the final round.
His next defeat was a predictable one, as Taylor was outclassed by big-punching German Arthur Abraham, before once again being heavily knocked out with seconds remaining in the fight. For a man who has plainly and by his own admitting never been in love with the sport, his decision to effectively retire and return home to the quiet life he craves in Little Rock was presumably an easy one.
Taylor should not be pilloried for his obvious dislike for the sport that made him a fortune. All that counts is that he was a genuine world champion who gave his best on a handful of famous nights. For Taylor, that is more than enough.