Athletes - Jermain Taylor

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	Athletes - Jermain Taylor

Jermain Taylor (born August 11, 1978, Little Rock, Arkansas) is the current WBA, WBC, and WBO middleweight boxing champion. Taylor currently has a perfect record of 25-0-0, with 17 wins coming by way of knockout. He is married to former Louisiana Tech and WNBA player Erica Smith-Taylor.

Since early in his professional career, Taylor had been touted by many as being the heir apparent to middleweight king Bernard Hopkins. Taylor dominated all of his opponents, scoring wins over respectable fighters such as Raul Marquez and William Joppy (although both were at the end of their careers). On February 19, 2005, Taylor defeated the previously unbeaten Daniel Edouard via TKO in round 3. With this win, Taylor earned a title bout against Hopkins, who had unified the four major world middleweight titles and was rated by Ring Magazine as the #1 "pound for pound" boxer in the world.

Taylor fought Hopkins for the undisputed middleweight championship July 16, 2005. Taylor outboxed the slow-starting Hopkins early in the fight, winning the early rounds by using his jab and power punches. Although Hopkins gradually became more active and maintained his dominating defense, Taylor continued to fight aggressively (but ineffectively) and won some of the middle rounds. In the last four rounds, however, Hopkins became the aggressor and battered Taylor, shrinking Taylor's lead on the scorecards. Nonetheless, Taylor survived the late surge and won the fight by close split decision to become the new undisputed middleweight champion.

The decision was somewhat controversial. One judge awarded the twelfth round to Taylor; if he had awarded it to Hopkins, then the fight would have been a draw. Others have said that although Taylor deserved the win based on the point system, the fight demonstrated flaws in the system.

On December 3, 2005, Taylor won the rematch against Hopkins by a unanimous decision. Taylor had vacated his IBF title in order to make this fight happen.

Winky Wright is Taylor's mandatory opponent for the WBC title. The two will fight on June 17th, 2006 at the FedEx Forum in Memphis, Tennessee.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Jermain Taylor ]

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Athletes - Jermain Taylor

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