Jermain Taylor Has Always Had Stamina Issues Throughout His Entire Career

Former middleweight champion Jermain "Bad Intentions" Taylor won a highly talked about unanimous decision over journeyman Caleb Truax last Friday night at the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, on Showtime Boxing.

Unfortunately for Jermain, the reason why many fight fans are talking about this fight is not because he won in such a spectacular fashion, but because of the hard knockdown that he survived in Round 9 where Truax threw a big right hand to the cheek of Taylor that sent him down like a ton of bricks.

Taylor looked like he was done and not able to continue, but he slowly picked himself up and looked like he was not going to go on with the fight for he was facing away from the referee. The referee never really confirmed if he was OK to fight on or not, but instead, did the standard wipe the gloves off with his shirt and said OK let's go.

So Truax came right back at him, and Taylor held on to survive the rest of the round, and pretty much for the rest of the fight, since it was only a 10-round fight.

In the post-fight interview with Steve Farhood, Jermain Taylor seemed rather punch drunk or even just plain drunk for he started getting really excited about being knocked down and getting up from the canvas and went on and on bragging about it for some strange reason?

Many fight fans on the fight forums and Twitter began to say Taylor is clearly punch drunk and damaged goods and should retire before he gets even worse permanent long term damage afflicted upon him.

But here's the larger issue when it comes to Jermain Taylor that many are neglecting to see, and that is Taylor always had stamina issues through out his entire career.

I'm not talking about how most fighters slow down in the second half and give away rounds in the championship rounds, I'm talking Taylor becomes so fatigued in the later rounds that any shot landed clean on him would pretty much make him go to sleep literally.

If you take notice of all of Taylor's losses if he was knocked out, they always came in the later rounds.

In his most recent loss, he lost via a 12th-round KO from the hands of Arthur Abraham in a fight where he was holding his own had he not got tagged and went to sleep with seconds remaining in the fight.

In his loss before that, he lost again via 12th-round KO to Carl Froch a fight where he was winning on two of the three judges' score cards and a fight where he knocked down Froch in the third round.

Before that was his losses to Kelly Pavlik where, in their first fight, he violently punished Pavlik, knocking him down hard early in the fight where a more cautious referee would have waved off the fight declaring Taylor the winner.

That night, Steve Smoger, a referee known for letting fighters just beat the living crap out of each other, and who is the last to ever declare a quick stoppage for any fighter, was the third man in the ring and allowed Pavlik the chance to regain his composure to continue after literally holding onto Jermain's shoes in an effort to climb off the canvas.

Then, of course, Taylor's stamina began to betray him, and he inevitably got stopped by Pavlik. If you recall, he literally got hit and fell asleep almost sitting up against the ropes. Pavlik has some heavy hands that is for sure, but you add that with the extreme fatigue and horrible endurance, or lack there of that Jermain possesses, and that's why he went to sleep sitting up in that ring that night.

In the rematch, Taylor fought a smarter fight, not gassing himself out and going gun ho for the knockout as he did in the first fight with Pavlik, but again as the fight went on, Kelly became more dominant, and Jermain began to fade and fade, thus resulting in his second career loss.

If you even want to go there, the only reason why many thought Bernard Hopkins beat Jermain Taylor was because, again, he became so fatigued in the later rounds, and Hopkins took over the fight from about Round 7 or 8 after Jermain won the first six or seven rounds.

So yes, old man Hopkins does have better stamina and endurance than the much younger Taylor, and the same thing goes for Jean Pascal. Hopkins knew and said himself that Pascal could only fight for four rounds, calling him a four-round fighter, and that's the only reason why Hopkins did beat Pascal in their rematch.

But the difference between Jermain Taylor and Jean Pascal is that as bad as Pascal becomes in the second half of his fights due to stamina issues, he at least never got stopped. Yet, Taylor not only gets stopped, but he goes to sleep, literally sleeping due to extreme exhaustion.

Jermain Taylor was on his way to becoming the next big name over at HBO back in 2005. They rushed and rushed him into a big fight with Bernard Hopkins, and the experience of the legend was supposed to teach the young fighter a thing or two that night, but the only thing I learned from that fight and pretty much every Taylor fight since then is that Taylor always had serious stamina problems.

Maybe Taylor has become damaged goods from all the knockout losses that he endured making his now 33-year-old body look like a fighter who fights on well into his 40s.

But the one thing that Taylor never corrected or improved was his stamina. Is there time to resolve that issue for the former champion who used to headline World Championship Boxing on HBO and HBO pay-per-views, but now, is reduced to fighting on Showtime's Friday Night Fights and not even on their main Saturday night fight night slots?

The answer is no. Today, we have controversial strength and conditioning nutritionists who have done wonders for a fighter's stamina. But the difference is these fighters hire these gurus early on in their careers where they are able to turn things around before they become too old and set in their ways.

Jermain Taylor will always have my respect for being the guy who beat Bernard Hopkins twice even when he became too tired to win the final championship rounds.

But Taylor and his team really need to evaluate things. He will not be able to compete on the elite level and probably should not anymore for health reasons.

He, if anything, should take another 10-rounder back home in Arkansas for one last homecoming swan song fight against a journeyman who does not have a high KO percentage rate and call it a career before his health and mind deteriorate even further.

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