Toros Bravos
I missed the Winky/Jermain fight live, because I was in France, so here is my belated commentary. A side note – I was not so naïve as actually to have hoped that I would be able to see the fight over there, but I did think maybe I would be able to find some mention of it in the popular French media. Not the results (I decidedly avoided the results), and not some big write-up, but just a small one-sentence mention somewhere of the existence of a middleweight title fight of import taking place in the States.
Perhaps I was looking in the wrong places. I hope so. Marcel Cerdan, ou et vous?
I Tivo’ed the fight of course, and so when I got home yesterday, the very first thing I did was watch it. Actually, the VERY first thing I did was call my parents to let them know that I was home safe, which was nearly a costly mistake. My dad: “How about that Winky/Jermain fight, JESUS…” I cut him off just in time.
I was immensely pleased by the bout, and if you are a fight fan, I imagine that you were too. The contrasting styles, Winky’s thoughtfulness and experience pitted against Jermain’s clumsy but explosive lunges – it was perfect boxing theater.
It surprised me that Winky traded with Jermain so willingly, and though he fared better in this approach than I ever would have expected, ultimately it cost him what could have been an easy decision. Had he played Ray Leonard to Jermain’s Hagler, he might have embarrassed Jermain. Had he done this just for the first six to eight rounds, he would have won in a rout. As the fateful last round showed, Jermain had no answer for Winky up on his toes, boxing and sticking that indefatigable right jab. It was certainly a mistake for Winky to resort to that style in the last round of the fight given the tone of the past 11 rounds. That’s always a sin in the eyes of the judges, particularly when you are the challenger, and it’s hard to imagine any fighter actually managing to convince himself that it is otherwise. De la Hoya, Trinidad, etc. 
But if Winky had set this tone from the outset, he would have had Jermain exasperated and exhausted by the final third of the fight, at which point he could have imposed his will. The true matador wearies the bull before he plunges the sword. Jermain Taylor is a bull of the highest order, powerful, furious, but also as technically unsound a fighter as you'll ever see defending a unified title. Winky had all the tools at his command to expose Taylor had he so chosen, but I suspect that hubris got the better of him. For eleven rounds Saturday night, the bullfight was just two bulls. A draw was a fitting end to the occasion.
5 Comments:
What is it about Taylor that makes experienced fighters pick poor startegies? I feel like the same thing happened in the first Hopkins fight. Bernard fought the wrong fight for most of the bout, and at the end made some headway fighting the way he should have been fighting the whole time.
Yeah, Dago, the whole Bernard thing - as a Philly guy, I must say, I was wounded with his approach, more in the second fight than the first. The first just felt like a miscalculation to me, and nevertheless, I feel like he won the fight by a narrow but still respectable margin. I expected a much different Bernard in the second fight, but if anything he was more cautious, almopst resigned I felt, to a strategic battle.
I guess we shouldn't underestimate Jermain's power. Motherfucker is combustible. Some of those body shots he was putting on Winky were ferocious.
Yeah, I felt that Hopkins got hurt far more than he let on (shocking) in the first fight and that governed his approach in the second. He didn't want to go through that again. But there were plenty of times where he controlled the first fight (I feel he won as well) but I guess the cost may have been too steep to continue consistently in that manner.
In other words, regarding Jermaine's power, true true.
First, of all I want to recognize what I believe to be the first use of "Trinidad" as verb. Hopkins cornerman, Nazzim Richardson, I think, who had the booming Brooklyn voice and the lace, Muslim cap exhorted Hopkins between the ninth and the tenth to "Trinidad him." It was an apt shorthand. Although, he didn't have his dad in his corner, Tarver had the lost boy space eyes and shuffle that made perfectly clear even to Buddy McGirt that like Trinidad in '01, he just wanted to go home.
I hate to side with the human speech impediment, but I agree with Larry Merchant that if there's one thing to complain about Bernard, it's that he has never been willing to take the kind of risk necessary to put the knockout exclamation point onto a totally dominant performance--unless the opportunity falls in his lap. Trinidad like a stuttery robot kept coming forward, begging to be put out of his misery. Tarver at McGirt's urging stayed back.
Onto Winky v Jermaine. I think Winky believed that if he didn't take the fight to Taylor, he might get knocked out. Jermaine has a light heavyweight's body and despite his glaring technical flaws, unlike a Mayorga, he can at least throw straight punches and his reflexes and coordination are as good as anyone's. If Taylor sussed that Wright could not hurt him at all, he would have pursued him relentlessly, and Winky does not have a Sugar Ray over Hagler type quickness advantage over Taylor.
Taylor's ability to execute Steward's plan of straight right counters off Winky's jab, was impressive. it showed he was very coachable and has ridiculous hand speed. The thing that hurt Taylor the most was a head butt--Wright's best shots seemed only to annoy him, whereas Taylor's best shots clearly did serious damage. Winky is clever about attacking while wounded, but there were points when he looked badly hurt.
If there's a rematch and Taylor stays with Steward, I think he knocks Winky out.
CI loves Jermain almost as much as Jim Lampley does.
I am not convinced that Jermain's swollen eye was caused by a headbutt. Never trust what Lennox has to say about anything.
I did not see any points in the fight where Winky looked "badly" hurt. Stunned a few times, but never wobbled.
Obviously if you're going to fight Winky the main thing you need to figure out how to do is counter the jab. I didn't think Jermain did a great job of this, and it would have been worse if Winky was moving a little more. He gave Jermain more of a stationary target than he's ever given anyone. This, I think, is because not only did he want to win the fight, he wanted to become a star in doing it. He wanted to beat Jermain in a brawl that elevated him into the boxing stratosphere and out of the purgatory that he's in - the southpaw with great defense, no knockout power, and a punishing jab. The strategy may have succeeded anyway - this was a more entertaining fight than almost any other Winky fight (although watching him pants Trinidad was pretty entertaining). But he did not win, and I think he coudl have easily outpointed Jermain, who is very clumsy when he has to keep moving to find his opponent - trips over himself all the time in there. I stand by my assessment - if Winky fought that in and out, eat my jab style that used to be his bread and butter, it's a rout.
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