Taylor champ, but who's best?
Hopkins Sees Clouded Middleweight Picture
by Bernard Fernandez
philly.com
Now enjoying his second week of retirement from the ring, Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins decided against journeying to Memphis last Saturday for the matchup of the guy who twice clipped him on controversial decisions, middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, and Winky Wright.
Hopkins, who closed his stellar career June 10 with a one-sided decision over IBO light-heavyweight titlist Antonio Tarver, would have preferred that one man or the other had won convincingly instead of settling for a draw that again has left the middleweight division under a cloud of uncertainty.
If you're keeping score at home, that makes three straight fights in which Taylor has done OK but failed to establish himself beyond reasonable doubt as the foremost 160-pounder on the planet.
"I was hoping a clear winner would emerge," Hopkins said. "I have no ax to grind with Jermain Taylor or anyone else. The middleweight division, and all of boxing, needs clarification as to who the real champions are. It's not about who holds the titles. It's about who's the best.
"Everybody's telling me Winky deserved to win. I saw the fight. There were a lot of close rounds. I'm not upset that it was a draw. But you knew they were going to give [favorable treatment] to Jermain because he's supposed to be the next big thing. Boxing politics are all on his side. And, to a degree, I can understand that. Jermain Taylor or somebody like him needs to step up and be recognized as the top dog. There has to be an order to things so that they make sense.
"But right now I don't think anybody, even in Arkansas [Taylor's home state], can say Jermain is a superstar based on his last three fights. There are people who will swear he lost all three of those fights. There are some who say he won all three, too, but you're talking about a lot of unanswered questions. Who's right? Who's wrong? It's not Jermain's fault, but that's the million-dollar question." |
