Jermain Taylor

Jermain Taylor (born August 11, 1978) is an American former professional boxer who competed from 2001 to 2014.

Taylor, who began boxing officially at age 13, earned numerous accolades throughout his amateur career, starting with his achievement of the 1996 Under-19 Championship.

He went on to win a pair of Police Athletic League (PAL) Championships and National Golden Gloves titles and he finished second and third at the 1997 and 1998 United States Championships, respectively.

In 1998, Taylor won a bronze medal at the Goodwill Games.

Then, in 2000, he earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic boxing team, becoming the first ever boxer from Arkansas to compete in the Olympic Games.

At the 2000 Olympics, Taylor won a bronze medal in the light middleweight division.

During his reign as unified middleweight champion, Taylor won an immediate rematch against Hopkins and defeated Kassim Ouma and Cory Spinks, as well as fighting Winky Wright to a draw.

In December 2000, Taylor signed with boxing promoter Lou DiBella.

Pat Burns became Taylor's trainer as a professional and Ozell Nelson became an assistant.

Taylor made his professional debut in 2001 and won his first 25 bouts, which included victories over former champions Raúl Márquez and William Joppy.

He made his professional boxing debut on January 27, 2001, at Madison Square Garden in New York City against Chris Walsh.

Taylor managed to knock Walsh down twice with his right hand and won his debut after forcing a stoppage with 16 seconds left in the fourth and final round.

He went on to fight six more times in 2001, resulting in six more victories.

Taylor continued his winning streak through 2002 and 2003, before defeating Alex Bunema on March 27, 2004.

Taylor's next bout occurred on June 19, 2004 against former IBF Light Middleweight Champion Raúl Márquez.

Taylor controlled the fight by using his jab and right hand throughout the one-sided contest.

Near the end of the ninth round, Taylor landed a right uppercut that staggered Márquez.

A follow-up right hand put Márquez down just before the bell rung to end the round.

Soon after Márquez arrived to his corner, his trainer told the referee to stop the fight, resulting in a technical knockout victory for Taylor.

On December 4, 2004, Taylor fought former WBA Middleweight Champion William Joppy in his hometown of Little Rock.

For the majority of the fight, Joppy made the more aggressive Taylor chase him, while landing few punches and seeming more content to frustrate Taylor.

Taylor landed several punches early in the fight and knocked Joppy down in the fifth round en route to a unanimous decision victory with scores of 120–107 from all three judges.

He remains the most recent undisputed middleweight champion, having won the WBA (Undisputed), WBC, IBF, WBO, and The Ring middleweight titles in 2005 by beating Bernard Hopkins, and in doing so ending Hopkins' ten-year reign as middleweight champion.

This made Taylor the first, and to date, only male boxer in history to claim each title from all four major boxing sanctioning organizations in a single fight.

He once again defeated Hopkins six months later, making him the only fighter to have defeated Hopkins twice.

He retired as a world champion in the months that followed his capture of the IBF middleweight title for a second time, after making a substantial recovery from a brain injury sustained earlier in his career.

In his next bout, Taylor fought Daniel Edouard on February 19, 2005.

In the third round, Taylor landed a 10-punch combination that hurt Edouard to the point that the referee decided to stop the fight.

Taylor fought Bernard Hopkins for the Undisputed Middleweight Championship on July 16, 2005 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

At age 40, Hopkins entered the bout with a record 20 consecutive successful title defenses and had not lost a fight in 12 years.

Hopkins entered the boxing match as a 3–2 favorite to win.

Taylor was able to successfully use his jab to control the first two rounds of the fight, though neither fighter was taking any major risks.

He tended to move forward, while Hopkins was patient and waited for openings in Taylor's defense.

Having vacated the WBC and IBF titles, he lost the remainder of the unified and lineal middleweight championship to Kelly Pavlik in 2007, in what was his first professional defeat.

A move up to super middleweight for a rematch against Pavlik the following year was also unsuccessful.

In 2009, Taylor challenged Carl Froch for the WBC super middleweight title, but was stopped with seconds remaining in the final round.

At the end of the year he participated in the Super Six World Boxing Classic tournament, but was again knocked out in the closing seconds of the final round by Arthur Abraham.

Subsequent neurological issues forced Taylor out of the ring for the next two years.

He returned in 2011, winning five consecutive fights and defeating Sam Soliman in 2014 to claim his second IBF middleweight title.

Later that year, Taylor was arrested and detained on gun charges but avoided a prison sentence in 2016.