MEMPHIS, Tenn. --- All advance wisdom about the fight pointed to twelve long and boring rounds, but who could have guessed they’d be so long and boring that they’d put one of the judges to sleep?

That Jermain Taylor, who spent most of the evening chasing Cory Spinks up and down Beale Street, retained his middleweight championship, was hardly a surprise. That the verdict was not unanimous was. Just about the only thing Spinks won Saturday night was the hundred-yard dash, but Massachusetts judge Dick Flaherty somehow awarded the challenger nine rounds, producing a 111-117 scorecard so bizarre that everyone immediately assumed there must have been a mistake in addition.

Fortunately, both of Flaherty’s compatriots on the triumverate overseeing Taylor-Spinks saw it the other way. Gale Van Hoy, the Texas judge, gave nine rounds to Taylor (117-111), which, combined with Florida’s Mike Pernick’s 115-114 card allowed the champion to retain his title. (The Boxing Talk scorecard had Taylor ahead 118-110, not so much because he dominated what there was of a fight, but because in ten of the twelve rounds Spinks did absolutely nothing.)

It was billed as the “Border Battle,” but for the last eight rounds Taylor’s Little Rock supporters and Spinks’ homeys from St. Louis were united in a common cause: They stood as one man and booed both participants.

Suffice it to say that it was a fight unlikely ever to turn up on ESPN Classic. It might not even turn up on SportsCenter, because when they start looking for highlights they will discover there weren’t any.

For the most part, if you saw one round, you saw them all: Spinks running. Taylor jabbing, and occasionally managing to lunge in to land a quick one-two before Spinks could dart back out of range. If Taylor closed his avenue of escape, Spinks just reached out and grabbed him and awaited the arrival of referee Mike Ortega.

“If you want to be champion, fight me, don’t run from me,” said Taylor afterward. “He ran the whole fight.”

Spinks, presumably because he was unscathed in the skirmish, muttered “that’s bull” when he heard the decision.

“I thought I won,” said the IBF 154-pound champion, who moved up in weight for the challenge. “I executed my game plan. I thought I gave a great boxing display. He was tough, but come on…”

It must have been some game plan.

It’s hard to imagine what the Spinks partisans (or, indeed, Flaherty) could have been looking at. Spinks threw more punches, but he missed entirely with 457 of the 542 he threw.

In literally every other category Taylor had the edge: He connected on 101 punches to Spinks’ 85, landed 50 jabs to Spinks’ 43, 51 power punches to Spinks’ 42, and connected on 40 per cent of his punches to Spinks’ 28. Throw in the fact the pitty-pat nature of most of Cory’s output for the evening.

Eighty-five punches. Think about it. That’s seven per round.

Spinks, incredibly, spent most of the 12th round dancing around as if he already had the fight in the bank, and threw just 25 punches over the final three minutes. As it turned out, had he won that stanza on Pernick’s card as he did on Flaherty’s, the fight would have been a draw.

Most experts had anticipated a stinking fight, and they got one, but it’s hard to blame Taylor for what transpired.

As bad as the main event was, the hotly-anticipated co-feature lived up to its advance billing, as unbeaten Kelly Pavlik shocked Colombian Edison Miranda, flooring El Pantera twice in the sixth and beating him into submission in the seventh round of their WBC eliminator to establish himself, at least on paper, as the next challenger for Taylor’s title.

Pavlik-Miranda produced the fireworks many ringsiders had anticipated, as both middleweights gave as good as they got over the first five rounds.

“I got hit hard, too,” said Pavlik, who was on the receiving end of several big right hand from Miranda in the early going.

Miranda, who had bloodied Pavlik’s nose in the second, was warned twice for low blows by referee Steve Smoger, but after five rounds, the judges were split three ways, with Miranda leading on one card, Pavlik on the other, and the third even.

Although Miranda had been able to periodically slow down Pavlik’s march by winging big overhand rights, he got caught himself in the pivotal sixth when Pavlik drove him to the ropes with a straight right and then crushed a huge left hook off the side of Miranda’s head that not only put him down but knocked his mouthpiece halfway across the ring.

After making the count, Miranda was able to buy further time while the mouthpiece was found and replaced, but Pavlik was able to put him down again before the round ended. A straight righ sent Miranda sliding down the ropes until the hit the deck.

A minute was not sufficient for Miranda to regain his senses, and when Pavlik swarmed on top of the Colombian, landing a combination that left Miranda sitting on the second rope strand, referee Steve Smoger moved in to stop it at 1:54 of the seventh.

PunchStats confirmed Pavlik’s mastery on the evening, as he landed more than twice as many punches (242-111) as Miranda, including a 49-21 advantage in jabs and a whopping 193-90 edge in power punches.

“The heroes go down, but they get back up,” said Miranda. “I will get back up.”

Pavlik’s promoter Bob Arum got so carried away that proclaimed of Pavlik-Miranda “this was the way middleweights used to fight in the 80s,” but in truth, the only resemblance between Pavlik-Miranda and, say, Hagler-Hearns was that each fighter wore two gloves.

Pavlik is now 31-0, Miranda 28-1.

Taylor watched Pavlik’s victory on a television monitor in his dressing room.

“Miranda was overrated,” he said.

At Thursday’s press conference Mirana’s trash-talking through an interpreter had gotten Jermain’s dander up. Would that he could have gotten that pissed off at Cory Spinks.

“If Kelly Pavlik is the best out there and the money makes the most ense, then I’ll do it,” said Taylor, but while Pavlik looms the mandatory challenger, it is by no means certain that he will be the next one.

The perceived closeness of Taylor’s victory, added to the fact that he failed to dominate for the third straight title defense will probably have challengers coming out of the woodwork. Super-middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe and his promoter, Frank Warren, were to have been at ringside at the FedEx Forum, but in what was a likely negotiating ploy, changed their minds and flew back to Britain on Saturday. (If he had a TV set on board, Calzaghe was probably pleading with the pilot to turn around and go back.)

And Eddie McLoughlin, the manager of unbeaten Irish middleweight John Duddy, who won a 10-round decision over Dupre Strickland in New York Friday night, was in Memphis to discuss with DiBella the possibility of a Taylor-Duddy September fight at Madison Square Garden.

Pavlik? Calzaghe? Duddy? Or somebody else.

At least we can rest secure in the knowledge that it won’t be Cory Spinks.

Although the normally flashy Andre Berto appeared to have left his ‘A’ game back in Winter Haven, he was never seriously threatened in ringing up a seventh-round TKO of Martinus Clay. Berto didn’t begin to let his hands go until the fourth round, and by the sixth he had Clay on the floor.

Then, early in the seventh, when Berto tried to break a clinch by shoving Clay’s face with an open glove, the opponent abruptly wheeled, gave referee Clay Huddleson a “No Mas” wave, and walked back to his corner. The end came at 2:17 of the round.

“I was already cut, and he got me with a thumb in the eye,” said Clay, now 12-15-2.  Berto remained unbeaten at 18-0, but promoter Lou DiBella, who had hoped that clips of Berto’s fight might wind up on the HBO telecast, probably hopes they didn’t.

Spinks wasn’t the only son of a legend to fight in Memphis last night. Detroit middleweight Ronald Hearns, the son of the fabled Hit Man, and Philadelphia heavyweight Chazz (son of Tim) Witherspoon, a pair of second-generation boxers who both happen to be college graduates, posted wins on the Border Battle undercard.

Hearns (14-0) scored a shutout over Bayonne (NJ) veteran Dennis Sharp (17-5), winning every round on the cards of judges James Deming, Jim Deming, and Charlie Hall, of whom scored the bout 80-72. Although Hearns dominated from start to finish, he briefly evinced a less desirable family trait at the end of the first, when he got caught off-balance and was nearly knocked down by the light-punching Sharp.

Witherspoon also remained undefeated (at 18-0) with a third-round TKO of game St. Louis opponent Joe Stofle (10-11). Although Stofle fought bravely, he was clearly overmatched and taking considerable punishment from the Mensa Mauler, leading Smoger to do what Stofle’s corner should have by wisely rescuing him at 1:09 of the third.


Local favorite Ira Terry won a lopsided decision in his undercard bout against Carlos Valdez. Terrry, a lightweight from Brighton, Tenn. won every round on the cards both Demings, while Hall gave Valdez just a round. Terry stayed unbeaten at 15-0, while Valdez fell to .500 at 8-8.

Los Angeles junior bantamweight Jose Navarro improved to 26-2 with a sixth-round TKO of El Paso journeyman Robert Gomez (14-18-2).  Gomez took a knee in the first round after taking a hard right hook to the body, and the opponent drew a warning from Huddleson for hitting after the bell at the end of the second. Navarro continued to punish him to the midsection, and when Gomez went down from another body shot in the sixth, Huddleson stopped it at 1:38 of the round.

Joell Godfrey of East St. Louis eked out a split decision over DeLeon Tinsley in their bout, a rematch of a draw between the two then-unbeaten heavyweights on last month’s Zab Judah-Ruben Galvan card in Tunica. There were no knockdowns, but Godfrey drew a warning from Smoger for a third-round low blow. James Deming favored Tinsley (58-57), but was overruled  by Jim Deming (58-57) and Hall (58-56). Godfrey is now 7-0-1, Tinsley 7-1-1.

Arkansas light-heavyweight Ray Smith decked Texan Dan Mouton with a left hook in the first round en route to a unanimous decision in their four-round prelim. James Deming had it a shutout for the winner at 40-36, while Hall scored it 39-36 and Jim Deming 39-37. Smith is now 6-1, Mouton 2-2.

*   *   *
The Border Battle
FedEx Forum
Memphis, Tenn.
May 19, 2007

MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Jermain Taylor, 159.8, Little Rock Ark. dec. Cory Spinks, 159.8, St. Louis, Mo. (12) (Retains WBC and WBO titles)

Kelly Pavlik, 159.8, Youngstown, Ohio TKO’d Edison Miranda, 160, Buenaventura, Colombia (7) (WBC title Eliminator)

Ronald Hearns, 156.4, Detroit, Mich. dec. Dennis Sharp, 157.6, Bayonne, N.J. (8)

HEAVYWEIGHTS: Chazz Witherspoon, 233, Philadelphia, Pa. TKO’d Joe Stofle, 256.8, St. Charles, Mo. (3)

Joell Godfrey, 204.8, East St. Louis, Ill. dec. DeLeon Tinsley, 200.4, Orlando, Fla. ()

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHTS: Ray Smith, 176, Fort Smith, Ark. dec. Dan Mouton, 174.8, Houston, Tex. (4)

WELTERWEIGHTS: Andre Berto, 146, Winter Haven, Fla. TKO’d Martinus Clay, 147, Wilson, N.C.(7)

LIGHTWEIGHTS: Ira Terry, 133.8, Brighton, Tenn. dec. Carlos Valdez, 130.2, Phoenix, Ariz. (6)

JUNIOR BANTAMWEIGHTS: Jose Navarro, 114.4, Los Angeles, Calif. TKO’d Roberto Gomez, 114, El Paso, Texas (6)

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