Pavlik rose at the count of two, but there were eighty-eight seconds left in the round.
“I was shaky,” Pavlik admitted later. “That right hand hurt. I’d been knocked down before but there was never a buzz. It had always been a balance thing. This time, there was a tingle and my legs weren’t so good. I was there mentally but my legs were gone. All I could think was, ‘Hold on, get through this round.’ He hit me with some more hard shots, but I got through the round.”
After round two, the Taylor fans were celebrating like the fight was over.
In Hopkins-Taylor I, Jermain had walked through fire. Now Pavlik had to do the same.
In the corner after round two, Kelly managed a weak smile. “I’m okay,” he told Jack Loew. But he was bleeding from the nose and mouth.
Then, incredibly, Pavlik won round three. The punches that Taylor had thrown in the second stanza seemed to have taken more out of him than out of Pavlik.
Dennis Moore, who was in Taylor’s corner that night, recalls that, after round four, Jermain walked back to his corner and told Emanuel Steward, “Coach, I have nothing left.”
“All the things that Jermain had done wrong in Detroit caught up to him,” Moore says.
The die was cast. Taylor was faster. He was ahead on points throughout the fight. But inexorably, Pavlik was beating him down. The champion found himself having to punch his way out of corners. When the fight moved inside and one of Pavlik’s hands was tied up, Kelly fought with the other hand rather than clinch. He made Taylor fight for every second of every round.
“Jermain has a chin,” Pavlik said afterward. “I hit him with some punches, flush, right on the button early, and he didn’t budge. But then he started to wear down. In the fifth round, I thought I hurt him a bit against the ropes. But he came back with a right hand that came close to putting me in trouble again, so I reminded myself to be careful. In the seventh round, I hit him with another good right hand and his reaction was different. I saw his shoulders sag. There was that little buckle in his knees, and I knew I had him.”
The right hand backed Taylor into a corner again. Pavlik followed with a barrage of punches, and Jermain went limp. He was defenseless. Referee Steve Smoger stepped between the fighters. Kelly Pavlik was the new middleweight champion of the world.
“Oh, man,” Pavlik says, looking back on that moment. “I remember it like it was yesterday. The excitement. The feeling inside. I started fighting when I was nine years old. For sixteen years, that had been my dream. Everything was a blur. Running to the corner, putting my arms in the air. Everyone grabbing at me and hugging me. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’ Yeah, I knew what I’d done. I was champion of the world.”
It was an important night for boxing. Millions of fans had seen the fight because it was on HBO, not pay-per-view. Pavlik had put on a show reminiscent of Arturo Gatti’s enthralling, never-say-die, action style. And he had Gatti’s blue-collar, ethnic appeal.
“That night,” Jim Lampley, who called the fight for HBO, says, “I thought that Kelly Pavlik was on the verge of becoming the face of American boxing.”
When Pavlik returned to Youngstown after the fight, his SUV was met at the Ohio border by a caravan of police cars and fire trucks that escorted him home.
The perks kept coming.
Pavlik threw out the ceremonial first pitch before game four of the American League Championship Series between the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox. He sat beside the legendary Jim Brown after presiding over the coin toss before a Cleveland Browns home game against the Miami Dolphins and addressed the Ohio State Buckeyes before the Ohio State-Michigan football game. A congressional resolution praised him for his commitment and continuing loyalty to Youngstown and the state of Ohio.
“It’s weird,” Kelly said at the time. “One day, I was ignored. And the next day, people are calling me a savior. I haven’t changed, but a lot of people are treating me different. Go figure. I’m just doing my job.”
Five months after dethroning Taylor, Pavlik won a unanimous decision in a Las Vegas rematch. But there were warning signs on the horizon.
Jack Loew says that Pavlik drank beer and occasional shots while training for both Taylor fights.
“But Kelly didn’t start drinking at age twenty-five,” Loew says. “He was drinking when he turned pro at eighteen, and it only got worse. He was going to be Kelly Pavlik whether it ruined him or not. I tried to stop it. But Kelly wouldn’t listen. He’d say, ‘Come on, Jack; you drink too.’ And I had a choice. I could deal with it as best I could or walk away. I’d been in boxing a long time. I’d had one fighter I made a lot of money with. I’d been with Kelly since he was a kid. For most trainers, a fighter like Kelly comes along once in a lifetime. And that’s if they’re lucky. So I put up with it. I became part of the let’s-be-quiet-about-it team. Kelly wasn’t going to change. Not when he’d become a world champion and a millionaire doing things his way. In Kelly’s mind, there was no problem.”
After beating Taylor twice, Pavlik had an easy title defense against an overmatched Gary Lockett. Then, on October 18, 2008, he stepped up in weight to fight Bernard Hopkins at a contract weight of 170 pounds.
Once again, Pavlik drank during training camp. Worse, in the days prior to the fight, he suffered from bronchitis with a fever as high as 101 degrees and had taken Mucinex, penicillin (one shot on Wednesday night), and ciprofloxacin (500 mg twice a day through the day of the fight).
Hopkins dominated en route to a unanimous-decision triumph.
At that point, the once-adoring local media turned on Pavlik. There were reports of heavy drinking and blaring headlines: “Pavlik Fights Off Rumors About His Personal Life.”
“People were killing each other on the streets in Youngstown,” Mike Pavlik, Kelly’s father, recalls. “You had young men and women dropping dead from heroin every day. And the media fixated on every little stupid mistake that Kelly made.”
“The calls started coming in,” Cameron Dunkin remembers. “‘Kelly was out late last night, drinking. Kelly was out last night. He was drunk.’ I’d ask him, ‘How are you doing, Kelly?’ And he’d say, ‘I’m doing great.’ But you knew he wasn’t. In a boxing ring, Kelly was as tough, physically and mentally, as a person could be. But in real life, he was weak.”
After losing to Hopkins, Pavlik returned to 160 pounds and he successfully defended his title in lackluster outings against Marco Antonio Rubio and Miguel Angel Espino. On April 17, 2010, he was dethroned by Sergio Martinez.
Soon after, Pavlik entered a treatment program at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, California, but left before completing the program. He returned for a longer stay in the autumn of that year. But he still wanted to do what he’d always done, and that included drinking.
Four victories over pedestrian opposition followed. Pavlik entered the ring for the last time on July 7, 2012. “If you don’t have it anymore, whatever the reason, boxing is a dangerous hobby,” he says. “I didn’t have it anymore, so I got out.”
But the drinking continued. Since retiring from boxing, Pavlik has pleaded guilty to a series of criminal charges including assault, breaking and entering a foreclosed house (that was known locally as a “haunted” house), and disorderly conduct. In April 2017, he was given a six-month suspended sentence after pleading guilty to charges related to shooting a man with a pellet gun. Meanwhile, Taylor’s life was also spiraling downward.
Emanuel Steward was dismissed after the knockout loss to Pavlik, and Ozell Nelson took over as lead trainer. In November 2008, Taylor won a lethargic decision over a diminished Jeff Lacy. Then he entered Showtime’s 168-pound “Super Six” tournament. Brutal knockout defeats at the hands of Carl Froch and Arthur Abraham followed.
More seriously, Taylor sustained a brain bleed in the Abraham fight.
Andrew Meadors is a Little Rock financial planner who helped Taylor manage his money during the glory years.
“It will be interesting now to see how Jermain does
personally,” Meadors said after the Abraham fight. “We’re telling him he has a whole new life. He needs to find new things to do every day that don’t cost a lot of money. Hunting, fishing, family life, church groups, charity work. He’ll feel lost for a while because boxing is such a routine. I hope he doesn’t do what many young men do who are upset about their lives: engage in alcohol abuse with loser-type people who want to drink all the time. That would make me very sad. Jermain has a choice now on how his life goes. The final chapter of his life has yet to be written.”
Eventually, Taylor returned to the ring and won four fights against low-level opposition. Pat Burns was back in his corner, but it was too late. The ceiling was caving in.
On August 26, 2014, Taylor was arrested and charged with first-degree domestic battery and aggravated assault after shooting his cousin in the leg. On the night of the shooting, the cousin had appeared uninvited at Jermain’s home with a second man, who had recently been released from jail. Taylor ordered them off his property. They wouldn’t leave, so Jermain took a gun and fired several warning shots in the air, at which point the cousin said that Jermain didn’t have the guts to shoot him.
The day after his arrest, Taylor was released on $25,000 bail. There was one last fight, an October 8, 2014, decision over forty-one-year-old Sam Soliman that brought Jermain a bogus championship belt.
Then, on January 19, 2015, Taylor was arrested again, this time on charges of aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a minor, and possession of marijuana after he fired a gun during a parade in Little Rock honoring Martin Luther King Jr. His bail was revoked.
While Taylor was in jail, family tragedy added to his troubles. A brother who suffered from seizures died. Then Jermain’s mother was diagnosed with brain cancer and died while he was incarcerated. Jermain wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral. But the judge overseeing his case let prison guards escort him to the funeral home so he could have some quiet time with her.
“That hurt,” Pat Burns says. “It hurt a lot, not being there for his mother at the end.”
On December 1, 2015, Taylor pleaded guilty to charges related to three separate incidents: (1) shooting his cousin; (2) threatening a family and shooting his gun in the air after the Martin Luther King Jr Day parade; and (3) assaulting a fellow patient while in a court-ordered rehabilitation program. On May 20, 2016, a Pulaski County circuit judge imposed a six-year prison sentence that was suspended on the condition that Taylor stay out of trouble, submit to drug testing, and perform 120 hours of community service.
Taylor will be thirty-nine in August. He and his wife, Erica, had four children together. In 2014, she filed for divorce and her petition was granted.
“Jermain and I talk on the phone from time to time,” Pat Burns says. “He has a lot of regrets. The divorce was the right thing for Erica and the kids, but that’s not what Jermain wanted to be. He wanted to be a good husband and a good father. He’s hurting a lot over some of the things he did.”
And the money is gone. Burns says that Taylor is working part-time now as a personal trainer. But he’ll need to get a steady job.
Dennis Moore will always be in Jermain’s life.
“Jermain is trying his best now to stay clean and stay out of trouble,” Moore reports. “I think he’s on the right road to living a normal life, but it will be a struggle.”
“As far as I know, Jermain has been clean and sober for a year now,” Andrew Meadors says. “He understands that one mistake could put him in prison for a long time. I’m hoping for the best. I’ll do whatever I can to help him. But like a lot of people, my fear is that, someday, he’ll be in the newspapers again for the wrong reason.”
Taylor has worked his way back into good physical shape since his incarceration. He talks from time to time about fighting again. That would be unfortunate.
Dr. Margaret Goodman (one of the most knowledgeable advocates for fighter safety in the United States) says it’s possible that brain trauma from boxing contributed to Taylor’s problems. “With CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy],” Dr. Goodman explains, “you see extreme personality and mood changes. But you wouldn’t know whether that’s the case here without a lot of tests.”
The most reliable tests for CTE are conducted post-mortem.
Efforts by this writer to contact Taylor in conjunction with this article were unsuccessful.
Pavlik, who’s thirty-five, appears to be better positioned for the future than Taylor. Kelly has money from his ring career, a reasonably strong family support system, and no signs of CTE. He and his former wife, Samantha, divorced but are now living together again with their daughter and son, ages eleven and eight.
“I’m not a materialistic person,” Pavlik recently told this writer. “I don’t need expensive things. I saved my money and I have some investments. I’ll never have to throw a punch or punch a time clock again. I’d like to have my own gym someday, but I want to do it right. I’ll need knowledgeable people working for me, and I’d have to be there every day.”
Like Taylor, Pavlik is subject to random drug and alcohol testing as part of his sentence. He’s in a supervised diversion program and can’t drink or leave Ohio without court permission for one year. If he gets in trouble, he goes to jail. He now weighs 235 pounds after making a commitment to power lifting, “Solid, all muscle,” Kelly says. “I enjoy lifting. It makes me feel good.”
Years ago, Pavlik acknowledged, “I honestly wouldn’t wish fame on anybody. There are a lot of perks that come with it. But there’s a lot of bad and a lot of stress that comes with fame, too.”
He still feels that way.
“Some of the stuff I did was childish,” Pavlik admits. “I put myself in stupid situations. My dad told me again and again, ‘You’re in the spotlight now. Watch what you do.’ But I wanted to be me. That was my thing. I figured I’d succeeded at my job, so why should I change? But things came with being champion that I hadn’t expected. You’re supposed to go to the gym. Bust your butt. Go home. Fight. But I was also supposed to be a role model. And do this charity. And please, visit this dying kid in the hospital. It would mean so much to him. And the next day, it’s an old man who’s dying or I go see children with mental disabilities. I didn’t have time to do everything people wanted me to do. There were times when I was overwhelmed by it all. And if you don’t do everything that everyone else wants you to do, all of a sudden you’re an asshole. I didn’t change. But after I became champion, everything around me did. Then you start hearing, ‘Kelly is in a bar. He’s here drinking.’ Well, I’d just busted my ass in training for two months and fought twelve rounds. If I want to play darts and drink beer, which is what I did before I became champion, why can’t I? Besides, if what I’m doing is so bad, what are you doing here drinking with me? You’ve got a wife and kids and you’re drinking your whole week’s pay away? I never said I had a halo over my head. I never thought I was better than anyone else. I made some bad decisions. There were times when I was out of training and overdid it. I wanted to have fun. But if you look at all the incidents, they wouldn’t have been news if it wasn’t Kelly Pavlik. People say, ‘Oh, you’re Kelly Pavlik. You got off because of your name.’ No! It got blown up because I was Kelly Pavlik.
“The BB-gun incident was misreported and blown out of proportion,” Pavlik continues. “No one writes that this guy was doing work on my property and living in my home at the time; that we were taking turns shooting at targets; that he stayed in my house the night after it happened and, the next day, brought his kids over to go swimming. Or that he pressed charges against me so he could get a settlement. I’m minding my p’s and q’s now. I’m more careful about the situations I put myself in. No more kid stuff. It’s been over a year since I’ve had a sip. I’m still playing in dart leagues. I’m still having fun. But it’s a different kind of fun than I had before.”
“When Kelly was sober,” Jack Loew says, “he was as much fun to be around as any young man I’ve known. If he doesn’
t go back to drinking, he’ll be okay.”
“Do you miss drinking?” Pavlik is asked.
“No. Not now.”
“Will you drink again when the year is up?”
“That’s a good question,” Kelly answers. “I don’t know.”
There’s a self-sabotaging mechanism that comes with alcoholism and drug addiction. If a person is motivated and gets in a good treatment program, he learns where the problem comes from and how to deal with it.
I had the opportunity to watch Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor under the most intense circumstances imaginable. I saw them in moments of celebration and also in bitter defeat. Each time, they handled what came at them on fight night with courage, dignity, and strength. I believe that these qualities are at their core.
“We were champions,” Pavlik says, reflecting on his ring rivalry with Taylor. “No one can ever take that away from us. The only two guys I lost to will be in the Hall of Fame someday. And Jermain beat one of the guys who beat me.”
“I have a lot of respect for Jermain,” Pavlik says in closing. “I like him. He’s a good person. He was at the top before I was. I’d like to sit down with him someday and trade old fight stories. Not just about our fights, but about the times he beat Bernard Hopkins. Both of us fell down. But when a fighter gets knocked down, he gets back up and keeps fighting.”
Keith Thurman: “If You Can Beat Me, Beat Me”
Shortly before fighting Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman told me, “I had long hair when I was young. People used to say to my mom, ‘You have a very pretty little girl.’ So when I was four, I cut it. Then, in sixth grade, I went back to long. In the amateurs when I was knocking everybody out, they called me ‘Samson’. I think about cutting it off from time to time, but I like what I know. Braids will do.”
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