Meldrick Taylor - two seconds from glory, but would it have changed things all that much?

Afternoon, chaps.

Despite boxing dozens upon dozens of other fights, many of them being against some-time world champions in front of large audiences, in essence the career of Meldrick Taylor, as well as what made him such an exciting, special but ultimately flawed fighter, can be condensed in to just one bout; March 17, 1990, Las Vegas in a 140 lb unification fight against Mexican legend Julio Cesar Chavez. As we all know and are all well-versed in, for 35 minutes and 58 seconds of the scheduled 36 minutes of action, Taylor looked on course to become the unified kingpin of the Light-Welterweight division, as well as establishing himself as a serious candidate to the pound for pound number one spot.

But with two seconds left, it all went horribly wrong.

You simply can't mention Taylor's name without automatically thinking of that fight. It enveloped Taylor's career and life to such an extent that, essentially, Taylor became known as 'that guy who nearly won that fight.' Even his autobiography, designed to cover his entire life and career, ended up being called 'Two Seconds from Glory.' To so many, even Taylor himself it would seem, that fight WAS his career, and WAS his life.

While the physical toll of his first fight (there was to be a sad, sorry rematch four years later, which is almost totally forgotten) against Chavez was considerable, the mental toll was perhaps even more of a problem for Meldrick. In the months after the fight, he admitted that he'd regularly spent hours on end watching the end of the fight over and over again while in his own company, unable to grasp and come to terms with the fact that he'd come so desperately close to becomming the first man to beat Chavez, but had ultimately fallen short thanks to no fault of his own but, as far as he was concerned, thanks to the incompetence or pure corruption of referee Richard Steele, who made that hotly-disputed (then as it is now) decision to halt the fight at 2:58 of round number twelve.

Depression set in, as did arguments with his trainer / manager Lou Duva, who had surprised many by telling Taylor that he needed to be the aggressor against Chavez in that final round, and who has also arguably contributed to Taylor's downfall after beating Steele's initial count at the end of that twelfth round by climbing up on to the ring apron and distracting Taylor as Steele asked him vital questions. A lack of intensity in the gym in the wake of all of this resulted in Taylor having to move up in weight as making 140 lb became a struggle, meaning that his lack of genuine knockout power would now be even more telling, and eventually led to a switch of promoters, Taylor leaving Duva's Main Events team to be managed by Don King.

In the end, all of this got the better of the 1984 Olympic gold medal winner, and he was effectively done and on the scrap heap as a top level fighter by the age of just 26.

Now, a common belief amongst many Taylor fans is that Steele, a slice of bad luck and, of course, Chavez's incredible toughness and stubborn streak broke Taylor's heart to the extent that he would never be the same fighter mentally, let alone physically, and that had he been allowed to see those two seconds out he'd have gone on to bigger and better things, becoming a legend of the sport eventually, and certainly not a fighter who would be a busted flush at such a young age.

However, when I look at it, I find myself wondering if all that much would have changed for Taylor in the long run, even if he had scored that historic win over Chavez.

Sure, a win over Julio would have propelled him pretty close to 'great' status already, and for while he'd have been on cloud number nine. Certainly his mental demons wouldn't have gobbled him up so quickly. But looking at Taylor, I think he was always destined to have a relatively short life at the top, and to always have that kind of 'what if?' question hanging over him once he'd hung the gloves up.

Taylor's strengths were there for all to see. First off, that insane hand speed. If you look a decade either side of Taylor's rise to stardom, the only men who compare in this department are Hector Camacho and Roy Jones. Taylor was also an accurate combination puncher, blessed with an excellent engine and workrate and one of the slickest jabs going.

On top of that, he had that little bit of devil in him, showing that he wasn't afraid to handle himself on the inside and hit low if the fight went that way, a trait which brought him a fair few point deductions. He also had an absolutely huge heart and a massive reserve of bottle and bravery - and yet, it was this which proved to be his downfall as much as anything else, and probably always would have been, no matter what had happened against Chavez.

So let's say that Taylor rides out that final round against Julio. Where next? Well, he'd have probably gone where he did end up going in any case - up to 147 lb to challenge Aaron Davis for his WBA Welterweight belt. According to Taylor, he'd already been struggling to make Light-Welterweight for the Chavez fight, and he and his team had decided beforehand that, win, lose or draw, it was to be his final fight there.

"This is my weight - 147," Taylor told Sports Illustrated before facing Davis in 1991. "I had a lot of trouble making 140 lb. Against Chavez, I fought the last three rounds dehydrated. I fought those rounds on heart alone."

Now it's a bit of a misconception that Taylor had nothing left after losing to Chavez, as far as I'm concerned. He certainly had his absolute prime beaten out of him, sure, but he was anything but a shot fighter in 1991. His performance in beating the previously undefeated Davis in his first Welterweight fight was actually very, very good in general. His defence was a shade leaky, but the speed and offensive arsenal was very much accounted for - he backed Davis up at will, doubled and trippled up the jab beautifully and dazzled Davis with those quicksilver combinations all night.

But the problem for Taylor is that his lack of genuine knockout power at 140 was always going to be even more evident, and even more of a hindering factor, up at 147. Taylor, despite all of his physical gifts, was always lacking in ring IQ, refusing to use his legs and the ring space to box at range in favour of trading on the inside. With no real devastating power of his own, such inside fights were always likely to be long, drawn out affairs in which, even if he won, he was going to take a lot of big shots. Those shots were hurtful enough at Light-Welter, but at Welter? Even more trouble in store, there.

Taylor just wasn't designed for moving through the weights. Relatively short even for a Light-Welter at 5'6", with a stocky build and short arms, his lack of reach meant that his hand would simply be forced in to fighting at close quarters even more as he faced the bigger men.

Davis may have had five inches in height and ten inches in reach on Taylor, but he didn't have that big-time punching power or brutal physicality to him that some of the other Welterweights of the era possessed. In essence, that fight perhaps gave the impression that Taylor had a big future at Welterweight when he really didn't, and also papered over the cracks of the Chavez fight. And in much the same way, Taylor getting through those final two seconds against Chavez would merely have papered over the cracks of how much he'd lost in the ring that night.

In 1992, Taylor was matched with Terry Norris at a 150 lb catchweight for Norris' Light-Middleweight title. It was a suicidal move, as Norris administered a savage four-round beating to Taylor, who was clearly punching well above his weight.

Again, it's often claimed that this fight is to blame, along with Chavez I, for Taylor's premature decline. "It would never have happened had they not thrown him in there with Norris" many have said, including me in the past, I guess. "That Norris fight turned Taylor's chin to glass and shattered what confidence he had remaining" and the like also get rolled out. All understandable, in fairness.

But a closer look suggests that the end was already creeping ever-closer for Taylor even before Norris got his hands on him, and that the war with Chavez was, even two years later, still taking a little something out of him every time he stepped in to the ring.

Taylor faced Glenwood Brown not too long before fighting Norris in a defence of his WBA Welterweight belt. Now actually, this was a surprisingly very, very good fight which gets forgotten and overlooked quite a lot. Taylor showed some, though notably less, of the skills which had carried him to two world titles, as well as displaying fantastic heart and determination, as he always did. But against Brown, who was really just a gatekeeper at best, it was clear that Taylor was declining at quite a rate, and was some way short of the fighter who'd outclassed Aaron Davis post-Chavez, nevermind the absolute peak, free-flowing, pre-Chavez version which had dazzled James 'Buddy' McGirt to defeat in 1988.

Down in the first, albeit from an excellent counter left hook, Taylor was arguably saved by the bell, and in the fourth he was floored again, this time by a relatively tame-looking right hand which grazed the top of his head. Although Taylor rallied magnificently in the final three rounds to just about retain his title on a narrow, but deserved points verdict, he was jolted, jarred and stunned many times over by Brown, a fighter who, on paper, should have had no chance of fully extending a man who was still considered to be one of the world's elite boxers.

Evidently, Taylor's punch resistance, concentration and body were all starting to betray him, and I don't think that would have been any different had he been allowed to see the fight through against Chavez, as many claim.

The clubbing which Norris gave him was sandwiched in between Taylor's fights with Brown and Crisanto Espana, in which the big-punching, lanky Venezuelan systematically took Taylor apart and stopped him inside eight rounds in front of a stunned London crowd in October 1992. But again, while sticking Meldrick in with 'Terrible Terry' was clearly a poor piece of judgement on the part of Main Events, I don't believe the common theory which says that it was to blame for Taylor's stunning, one-sided and very much against the odds loss to the previously unheralded Espana. Taylor was simply treading water as a Welterweight, and Espana, in contrast to Davis and Brown, simply had all of the tools (natural size to render Taylor's outside boxing meaningless, huge strength on the inside and, most of all, fantastic punching power) to exploit that fact.

I believe simply that, sooner or later, Taylor was always going to be given a huge, almost career-ending thrashing at 147 lb, even if he hadn't have boxed Norris. If it hadn't been Espana, it would probably have been Ike Quartey, who was soon to be installed as the WBA's number one contender and who eventually held their version of the Welterweight belt between 1994 and 1998. If it hadn't been Quartey then, after Taylor's eventual switch to Don King in 1993, it would probably have been Felix Trinidad, King's new Welterweight sensation who would have surely knocked ten bells out of the declining Taylor in a fashion similar to Espana.

In summary, while it'd have given him a very nice little piece of boxing history, I don't think that Taylor winning the Chavez fight, rather than just winning the 'event', would really have been a catalyst for him to go on and attain legendary status, as he and many others have claimed. In fact, I think his post-1990 career would have panned out exactly the same, give or take, and he'd have been resigned to the 'where are they now?' file just as early and at just as young an age as he eventually was in any case.

Overall, I feel that Taylor's 'broken heart' after the Chavez loss contributing to his career effectively ending so early is a bit of a myth. Getting the win would have made him the happiest, most confident boxer on the planet, but it wouldn't have saved him from his fate, for me. Similarly, I don't think that the tanning he got off Norris can be blamed, as I previously did, for bringing down what was effectively the final curtain. That curtain was already falling, and I believe someone like Espana would have always been the one to pull the chord, even if Meldrick hadn't been fed to Terry at Light-Middle.

So while we can all debate back and forth until we're blue in the face about whether or not Taylor was robbed of a victory against Chavez, as far as I'm concerned there's no ground to debate about whether or not he was also robbed of a legendary career and a place in the upper echelons, because for me, he was just destined to never make it there. Stuck between weights, a lack of ring intelligence which would have always manifested itself regardless of the result against Chavez, a load of stylistic nightmares for him all competing within his era etc. It just wasn't meant to be.

Anything to add, feel free. Cheers everyone.

can't add much other than that was an enjoyable read.
i've just watched it back again and can understand why the ref stopped it but can't believe he did.

Another excellent and Eye-watering article, thank god for punctuation. I agree that his career would have probably panned out the same but that loss took the wind out of his sails and momentum is an often overlooked quality in boxing - especially when looking back. That said he could have ended up fighting Chavez again and that would have ended his career there and then.

F**K me chris

Taylor was a mess after the fight anyway but its a very hard debate because chavez would have finished him anyway no matter how long was on the clock.

I think i'm in the minority but I think Steele made the right call, regardless of time left in the fight Taylor was in no condition to continue. I agree that even had he won his career was always going to be on a massive downturn, he was winning the fight easily but at the same time he was getting a horrific beating to both brain and body. Chavez destroyed Taylor that night and sealed his legacy and ruined the younger mans career.

Agree fully with ToT. Had Taylor lasted the extra two seconds, he would still have had the effects of a ruinous physical beating to overcome - "a facial fracture, he was urinating pure blood, his face was grotesquely swollen... this was a kid who was truly beaten up to the face, the body, and the brain" (Flip Homansky). Taylor, as Wikipedia also reminds us, showed signs of disorientation and short-term memory loss common to head injuries and concussions after the fight. This was perhaps most notably shown in the post fight interview with Larry Merchant, where Taylor insisted that Steele had ended the bout without giving him a count or asking if he was OK, until he was shown a replay of events.

If Taylor had won, like it or not, at whatever weight, his next fight would almost certainly have been Chavez II. People wouldn't have stood for anything else, and Don King would have made damn sure that Chavez got a second chance. Personally, I think JCC would have brutalised Meldrick second time round, and the ending could have been X-rated. We might now be regarding Chavez-Taylor I as the ultimate in Pyrrhic victories, rather than a heroic loss.

Whatever the case, I am with the opinion that Chavez ruined Taylor both physically and psychologically that evening. Taylor had boxed brilliantly at times, and I don't think he believed that under those circumstances, anyone could inflict the damage on him that Chavez did. In any conceivable scenario, poor Meldrick was riding for a hard fall after that.

Hbo legendary fights doc is a good watch on the Chavez v Taylor fight.

Also gives some good insight into Tayor's physical condition after the fight.

I disagree it was the right call..........Because the red lights were flashing and he must have seen them........He was very quick in his examination also for some strange reason......Perhaps to do with the scoring of the fight....

Took his time with Hearns and Barkley though........

Whether you agree with the stoppage or not don't give Steele any credit.......Because I do not for one minute believe he stopped it for any "good" reason.........

Hearns - Promoter's nest egg......(Arum)

Chavez - " " " ......(King)

It stunk...........and all Taylor's hard work...I had it 9-2 was chucked in his face.....

As for making a difference career wise..........I'm sure it affected him financially.......

Undisputed 140 champion may have afforded him easier paydays than Terry Norris...

He was roundly bashed for letting Hearns continue against Barkley.

He nearly let Tyson kill Bruno too...

So he should continue stopping them too late? For consistency?

Whatever....

Tyson clubs Bruno half to death...............Tyson is King's (house) fighter..so that's ok..

Barkley gets lucky against Hearns........Hearns given every chance.... Arum's (house) fighter.

Chavez clubs Rosario half to death (Towel has to get chucked in)......Chavez is King's fighter (house)..so that's ok..

Chavez knocks Taylor down ..with two seconds left it's stopped..(red lights flashing)  after having his butt handed to him...Chavez is King's fighter (house)..........

Interesting officiating.....One may think he knew where his bread was buttered.............To put it nicely..

Hang on, so Bruno's left in for too long because he's not the house fighter.
Hearns is left in for too long because he IS the house fighter.
Rosario's left in for too long because he isn't the house fighter.
Sounds like he occasionally gave the house fighter every chance and occasionally gave the other guy every chance.

You criticise him for letting Rosario go on when it was to his detriment, then slate him not letting Taylor go on when it could've been fatally to his detriment. He said himself he was so dehydrated his heart alone carried him through the final three. He would've had nothing protecting his brain with no fluid in his body.

Mixed views on the stoppage, it only takes a second for a guy to help themselves to a devastating punch... Think mcrory being allowed to continue against curry. But in such a big fight, how often are guys pulled out at the end of the 12th in a fight they are winning, after one knock down? They'd almost always be given another chance... Rightly or wrongly. That's why it smells. I guess you could say that those fights listed above where Steele let them go on too long were before this fight... Maybe the criticism of those influenced him.

Villain of the piece for me, if there is one is duva. Terrible advice at the end of the 11th and in complete denial about it.

As for chris' views on Taylor. Well it could be given his size and style he would never have made it as a welter. However, given he managed only one noteworthy performance against a light hitting opponent post Chavez 1, I'm inclined to think the mental and physical beating left him there for the taking whatever weight he fought at... But likely the effects were exaggerated by the bigger men.

Another consideration is how proven Taylor really was before jcc. His masterclass in taking mcgirt's title, overshadow's a relative lack of experience against top class opposition. Maybe he was there to be found out? Whichever he sure looked a shell of his former self in the fights I saw post jcc1.

Im with captain. If he was given the 2 seconds he would have had an immediate rematch invoked on him. His career either way could have done without back to back fights with jcc at 140.
The finish to the fight to me stinks a little. The beyond the glory program gives it the hollywood treatment though. Agreed with chris, taylor wasnt going to cut it at 147 long term. The norris fight was a terrible piece of managment.

A great read Chris. And I agree with what the others have said; if Taylor had won, there'd have been an immediate rematch. And Chavez was no mug - he would have given Meldrick a beatdown in said rematch.

genuine question guys

whay do you think Chavez would have beat down Taylor so convinvingly in the re-match?

I don't think it's a certainty rick, but:
- psychologically, Jcc would know he could get to him and Taylor would know it too
- physically, the first fight took more out of Taylor.

Put the two together and Chavez would be favourite. No guarantees though and if Taylor was physically recovered there's the chance that with the win he's retained his belief, and could maybe fight a more conservative fight.

We're all a bit compromised by the fact that we know what happened when they did fight again.

Be interesting to know what people think would happen if Jcc junior fought Martinez again.

Fair enough milkyboy, i think that the re-match that actually happened had to be taken out of consideration as taylor was a shadow of the man he would have been if he had not been defeated by "circumstance in the firstb fight, and i didnt think that Chavez was having a particulary off day, and, it wouldnt have been a flash win a la Rahman over lewis due to overconfidence

i dont think it would have been that cut and dry, but your points are fair ones milky

Thanks for the relies, everyone. Interesting that quite a few of us feel that, had Taylor won, his career might have been even shorter at the top than it already was. Very interesting angle which may well have a lot of truth in it.

Milky, you've kind of touched on one thing that really riles me up, and that's Duva's claims regarding the fight. I honestly don't know where he gets off, saying these days that he told Taylor to run down the clock in the final round and take no chances, when he must surely know that anyone can easily get hold of the footage which shows him, after round eleven, screaming lines like, "We need this one, Mel. Go after him, take it to him!"

There seems to have been a kind of oddness and uncertainty in Taylor's relationship with both Duva and George Benton, for whatever reason, and they didn't seem to be reading from the same page. Against Davis, which was Taylor's last top-class performance at world level, Taylor did in the twelfth round exactly what he should have done against Chavez, and kept on the move, saw the fight out and made sure of the win.

You'd think that Duva and Benton would have been pleased that he'd learned his lesson and made sure of the title, but Benton actually seemed disappointed with Taylor for doing so, telling Sports Illustrated, "We told him to stay away from trouble, but that wasn't exactly what we had in mind. I told him I wanted him moving in a circle, to keep turning Davis, and not jump on him. I didn't want him to run like that."

I honestly don't think that Einstein, Newton and Hawking combined could ever come up with a satisfactory theory as to why Duva decided to throw Taylor in with Norris immediately after that struggle against Glenwood Brown. Although he was a bit of a clown figure, Duva did generally do a good job by his men, but I'll always have serious misgivings about how he handled the career of Taylor.

There is no doubt that had Taylor won the fight Chavez would have got the rematch,Sulaiman as a Mexican and WBC president would have ordered it for the WBC belt at least.
Sometimes a fighter has that one fight that takes everything out of him perhaps the fight with Chavez done just that to Taylor.

Imo I feel the stoppage was a good call,regardless what you think of Steele, the fighters health is paramount doesn't mater about the clock.
If Steele got it wrong in other fights, 2 wrongs don't make a right.

A lot of ifs, buts and maybes but had he won he would have gone into a rematch with JCC knowing he was the more skilled, but also with an idea not to get drawn into a fight so much, and so would have been confident, but JCC wasn't the type to let a loss affect his self belief- when Randall and Whittaker beat him , he blamed everyone but himself, and so to would have entered a rematch with confidence, and this time I see it going down in a similar fashion to what happend in their actual rematch- Taylor wins the early rounds, pulls ahead only for JCC to catch up with him sooner.
I may be that my memory play tricks on me, but I remember the rematch being a much better fight than the sad spectical that some of you have alluded to- I can remember being amazed and delighted as Taylor seemed to turn back the clock and was starting to dominate the fight in the middle rounds- he even held his hands aloft after the fifth rounds he was looking so confident, but then suddenly just ran out a gas and fell apart. It may just be a case of me seeing what I wanted to see rather than what was actually happening though- He was one of my favorite fighters, and I was gutted when he lost to JCC first time, esp as one of the other lads at our club was a huge JCC fan and never let me forget it.
As I've said before I have a love / hate relationship with pro boxing, and when I see what the effect of 9years of it did to Meldrick I really struggle to justify my support of it- if you saw him as the charismatic, articulate 17 year old olympian and compare it to the shuffling , mumbling wreck he is now, it's heartbreaking. I can live with the acute injuries and even deaths as they are so rare, but the chronic injuries suffered so many fighters are harder to ignore.

Have to admit Duva's pre-final round talk was a shocker........However the fact the mexican had Chavez ahead probably justifies it a little.........

Duva didn't trust King who promoted it I imagine........

or maybe he watched Norton-Ali 3..........

Who knows but STEELE DID SEE THOSE LIGHTs...and he rushed his appraisal...and he knew Chavez wouldn't have enough time to land another shot..

Great article. Sadly, I'm a bit of a casual fan these days. But what I remember of the Chavez fight, it was the right call. Desperately unlucky but Chavez applied the pressure at exactly the right time. He was a god!

But, when all is said and done. He didn't have it in him to win a fight he should have won! And so, you have to ask yourself the natural question, did he ever? So, the rest of the article is moot.

horizontalhero wrote:A lot of ifs, buts and maybes but had he won he would have gone into a rematch with JCC knowing he was the more skilled, but also with an idea not to get drawn into a fight so much, and so would have been confident,  but JCC wasn't the type to let a loss affect his self belief- when Randall and Whittaker beat him , he blamed everyone but himself, and so to would have entered a rematch with confidence, and this time I see it going down in a similar fashion to what happend in their actual rematch- Taylor wins the early rounds, pulls ahead only for JCC to catch up with him sooner.
I may be that my memory play tricks on me, but I remember the rematch being a much better fight than the sad spectical that some of you have alluded to- I can remember being amazed and delighted as Taylor seemed to turn back the clock and was starting to dominate the fight in the middle rounds- he even held his hands aloft after the fifth rounds he was looking so confident, but then suddenly just ran out a gas and fell apart. It may just be a case of me seeing what I wanted to see rather than what was actually happening though- He was one of my favorite fighters, and  I was gutted when he lost to JCC first time, esp as one of the other lads at our club was a huge JCC fan and never let me forget it.
As I've said before I have a love / hate relationship with pro boxing, and when I see what the effect of 9years of it did to Meldrick I really struggle to justify my support of it- if you saw him as the charismatic, articulate 17 year old olympian and compare it to the shuffling , mumbling wreck he is now, it's heartbreaking. I can live with the acute injuries and even deaths as they are so rare, but the chronic injuries suffered so many fighters are harder to ignore.

Good post hh, think many of us have the same moral dilemmas and park our conscience at the door when the bell rings, only to get a reminder of where we left it all too frequently. Watching Ali these days brings a tear to my eyes.