By Joe Masterleo

 

Saturday night's middleweight championship bout between Jermain Taylor and Winky Wright in Memphis, Tenn., ended in a draw.  As a result, Taylor, while bruised and swollen, maintains his champion status.  More importantly, in the eyes of many boxing observers he also adds more well-deserved respect and admiration for his punching power, and particularly for spilling everything he had within the squared circle that nite -- all that is, except for the last and final round. 

Although the entire fight was an action filled back-and-forth battle of contrasting styles and table turning rallies, what should have been a 12th round grand finale to an otherwise gutty and hotly contested battle fizzled.  As in dud.  Foreplay without a climax.

 

For sure, the bout was a classic until the ending, when someone inserted the first chapter of the story where the last chapter should have been.  Since when do you feel each other out in the last stanza of a donnybrook?  Eat the salad and appetizer, then leave the main course cold on the table.  Prior to the bell sounding the start of the 12th round, it was abundantly clear to both boxer's corners, HBO announcers, those at ringside, millions of viewers...and you'd think somewhere inside each fighter's head, that the last round would call for a suck-it-up D-day performance on the part of both warriors. 

Instead, they looked more like two drunken sailors squaring-off in a back alley, minus the bravado and beer muscles, each unsure that they wanted any more of what the other had already dished.  In an otherwise stellar performance by both men, the only thing less inspiring surrounding the match was the frequent use of the F-word by Winky's manager, and the vapid "color" commentary by HBO's Lennox Lewis, who by the way, should henceforth pursue some other retirement endeavor. 

 

By the 12th round both fighters were fatigued, swollen and rubber-legged.  Mutual serial pummeling over 11 rounds can do that to a human frame, unless your name is George Chuvalo, who collected punches the way a flame gathers moths.  Give Taylor some leeway, however, as his left-eye was totally closed by the 12th, though what he did that last round could hardly be considered "germane" in light of his efforts the previous 11.  He didn't have a mouse over that left-eye.  It was a muskrat.  And what of Wee Willy Winky?  Well, let's just say he won't be found among the top 10 in the book called Boxing's Smartest Fighters.

 

Talk about being a legend in your own mind.  Wright may be a southpaw technician who packs a devastating right jab alright, but it says here he has neither the moxie nor the class to yet be champion -- which is probably why he isn't today.  Contrary to some ringside analysts, Wright didn't "give" the last round to Taylor, he fought like a man expecting his opponent to break open the champagne, while proposing a toast to the new middleweight champion of the world, with the referee and crowd as celebratory witnesses. 

For toppers, he storms off to his dressing room in a schoolboyish, tantrum-like huff, followed by a series of self-serving drivel before HBO's Larry Merchant that make Terrell Owens and Charles Barkley look like they suffer from low self-esteem.  I wonder if he kissed himself in the mirror.  Merchant would have been better served interviewing the parking lot attendant. 

 

What degree of self-inflation tells a guy, a challenger no less, that he ought to coast in the last round of a championship bout?  And against the likes of a Jermain Taylor who managed, between Winky's deft deflections, to sculpt his own lasting impressions on Wright's facial landscape.  That's a bit like insulting your boss 3 minutes before he's about to sign your paycheck...prior to going on vacation.

 

Says here the only thing Wright is champion of is his singular abiltiy to maintain a peculiar identity as a self-pitying boxing maverick and chronic underdog -- one which he not only self-orchestrates, but plays to the hilt with a little help from his handlers.  After his final act in Memphis last Saturday, Winky should be champion alright, somewhere back there behind the puffy countenance and martyr-complex.  Deep within the strange private world that only he inhabits.  I suggest his manager start with Winky first becoming champion of himself. 

 

Taylor is champion today, if only because, all things considered, the other guy didn't deserve it.