This is never good news for a boxer's career. Jermaine Taylor was arrested in Miami last weekend:
QUOTE
Cops arrested professional boxer and former middleweight champ Jermain Taylor over the holiday weekend in South Beach. Charges: disorderly conduct and resisting officers.
Happened during Urban Beach Week, at 10:45 p.m. Sunday, in the 1400 block of Collins Avenue Taylor, 30, driving a Rolls-Royce, allegedly stopped the car in the road, blocking traffic. When told to move, he climbed back in the Rolls, drove it another 100 feet, then stopped again. He got out and ''began to yell and dance,'' a police report says. A crowd of about 50 gathered.
Officers tried to arrest Taylor for breach of the peace when he resisted and pushed a uniformed cop in the shoulder, the report says.
Kind of surprising. Taylor had never had any trouble with the law as far as I'd ever heard and always presented himself as a good guy/family man type. Makes you wonder if the sudden fall from the top in his career is getting into his head.
In better news, HBO has one of their best recent Boxing After Dark cards tonight. Andre Berto, coming off a life-and-death split decision win over light-punching slickster Luis Collazo now faces a true KO artist in Juan Urango, who holds one of the other welterweight belts right now. This is a real test for Berto who, even though he holds a belt, is really still a rising fighter. Despite his cheaply-won belt, he's only recently graduated from "prospect" to "contender." I think Berto will ultimately outbox Urango, but he's likely to get his chin checked at some point and that will be very interesting.
The co-feature is a classic BAD crossroads fight: Alfredo Angulo vs. Kermit Cintron. Angulo is a Margarito-style, all-pressure, all-the-time fighter who's being touted as the next big Mexican star (something HBO badly needs for its PPV business). Cintron was huge puncher at 147, but in his 154-pound debut against Sergio Martinez he got outslicked and never was able to land the big one. Angulo will definitely be there to be hit and as far as I know (having seen maybe a half-dozen of his fights), Angulo has never had a "chin-check" moment. Of course, Cintron's only two losses came against Margarito, the fight Angulo most resembles in style.
A loss for Cintron knocks him down to "gatekeeper" status. A win over Angulo puts him right back in the title picture at 154. A win for Angulo probably earns him a title shot by the end of the year. A loss, while it wouldn't quite derail his career, would be a pretty big setback. He'd probably need at least another two wins over legit top-10 154-pounders to reestablish himself. It would also depend on the type of loss. A narrow decision obviously wouldn't be as bad as a stoppage.
Anyway, this is a damn good card and a nice warmup for Cotto-Clottey in a couple of weeks.