Despite being sensationally, almost unbelievably stopped with just those two famous clicks left on the clock, this in the final round of his titanic battle with Julio Cesar Chavez, it’s possible, indeed likely, that many fans have no qualms in calling Meldrick Taylor a great of the sport. The famed headline: “Two seconds from greatness” may well have haunted Taylor at the time, and maybe it still haunts him today. Because Taylor was so agonizingly close to beating the man so many of us call the greatest Mexican fighter who ever lived.
Instead, on that fateful evening of March 17th, 1990, Chavez turned the fight he was losing around, as he turned Taylor’s world upside down with that last-gasp, controversial (should ref Richard Steele have stopped the fight the way he did?), truly astonishing TKO. It was Chavez’s greatness that was cemented that day, not Taylor’s.
Still, Taylor did a heck of a lot in the sport, a heck of a lot of other things aside from losing the biggest, most celebrated (celebrated by pretty much all of Mexico) fight of his career. Taylor was born to fight. Or he was born to box. Taylor, who just might have been blessed with the fastest pair of hands in all of boxing, amassed an impressive 99-4 amateur record, and “T.N.T,” as he was suitably nicknamed, won Olympic gold in 1984.
But Taylor wanted to be a warrior, not a boxer; Taylor wanted to live up to the fearsome reputation the town of his birth was known for. Taylor was a Philadelphia fighter, just like Joe Frazier. And “The Kid” (this a second nickname Taylor carried) wanted to prove he had just as much fighting heart as Frazier and all the other special Philly fighters had. And he did so, ultimately at his own cost and long-term health.
Taylor, despite having fast feet and good movement, loved to fight up close and in the pocket, his punch output whilst being there dazzling to behold. Taylor had too much for the likes of fine fighters Buddy McGirt, John Wesley Meekins, and Courtney Hooper, all three men beaten by Taylor during his reign as IBF light-welterweight champion. But against Chavez, a fighter Taylor could maybe have outboxed, befuddled and outboxed some more (kind of like the way his ’84 teammate Pernell Whitaker would do when he met Chavez in 1993; Whitaker supposedly telling his trainers George Benton and Lou Duva that, if he was ever being beaten up the way Taylor was by Chavez, to “pull me out”) – the love of going into the trenches saw Mel pay a huge price.
In the Chavez war, Taylor suffered a broken orbital bone and bruised kidneys, and he swallowed copious amounts of blood as he was gashed inside the mouth. Watching the fight at the time, it looked like a masterclass by Taylor. And in the way, it was, but he was taking heavy punishment along the way. And then, ahead on two of the three cards, it happened. Taylor stayed too close to a desperate and dangerous Chavez, and he was tagged hard. Up but dazed, Taylor was, ironically, distracted by his own trainer Duva, who was up on the ring apron hovering, seemingly anticipating Steele’s wave-off of the fight. Taylor looked at Duva, not into Steele’s eyes, and the third man stopped it.
The boxing world went nuts. It was The Fight of the Decade. But Taylor had lost. He would never be the same again. Wins over Aaron Davis and Glenwood Brown followed, and these wins are nothing to sneeze at, but heavy, crushing losses to Terry Norris (up at a far too high 154), Crisanto Espana, and Chavez again, hurt Taylor in more ways than one. By now showing a physical decline as well as possibly cognitive decline, Taylor slurring his words, the former “Kid” was perilously close to being a shot fighter.
On he fought against no-names for low paydays. Taylor finally retired at age 35 in 2002. Sporting a 38-8-1(20) record, Taylor knew it was that first loss that mattered the most, that bothered him the most, that proved most pivotal in how the remainder of his career would play out. How different things would have been for Meldrick Taylor’s career and for his everyday life if he had boxed, not stood and gamely, so entertainingly fought in that unification showdown all those years ago.
Today, Taylor turns 58 years old. Rarely seen in public these days, Taylor, we hope, is still enjoying life and able to look back on his great – yes, great – ring career without feeling too much pain. Taylor was super-talented, he was super-fast, and for a while he was very, very special.
