The lights of the MGM Grand still dance in Jermain Taylor’s voice.
He searched for a word, a word he couldn't find because it didn't exist – a word to explain how a street kid from the boxing outpost of Little Rock, Ark., who trained in an old gas station and didn’t leave Arkansas until he was 14, unseated the most dominant champion the middleweight division had ever known.
"It was," he pauses, absorbing the experience one more time before settling on the prosaic but apt, "unbelievable."
He did the unprecedented when he defeated Bernard Hopkins at the MGM Grand July 16, ending Hopkins' record title defense run at 20 and sending the Executioner home with a loss for the first time since 1993.
You'll just have to forgive him if the language hasn't kept up.
"You know, it was the first time doing it, a fight that big," Taylor exhorts. “I felt green. I felt like this is the biggest moment of my life, ever. I came out and all those lights hit me. It was an amazing feeling."
The scariest moment isn’t a dream lost, it’s staring that dream in the face and putting your whole life into 36 brutal minutes knowing with one punch it could slip through your hands like water.
Taylor blazed out of the gate, winning the first six rounds near unanimously. "The nervous energy made me do it,” he confesses. “I spent a lot energy chasing him around when I should’ve been cutting the ring off.”
He weathered the final six rounds, but as he walked back to his corner, bleeding from the baseball-sized gash on his head, his body posture belied what his words wouldn’t say. His dream might’ve ended with Bernard Hopkins.
For nearly twenty years, Hopkins had waited to hear his name called as world champion. But that would have to wait for another night, not because he lost, but because his corner erupted at the first hint of his victory.
"I didn’t hear my name at all," Taylor says, laughing. "All I heard was 'And the new...' It was crazy. Everybody was screaming and hollering, but it was my people screaming and hollering so I knew it was good."
He speaks in warm tones about the night but he saves the warmest for his longtime confidant and trainer, Ozell Nelson. Nelson was the one who first nurtured Taylor’s talent when he was still in elementary school. He was the one who filled in as a father figure. He was the one who drove Jermain to St. Louis the first time he left the state of Arkansas.
And he was the one who knew exactly what to say.
“He gave me a hug,” Taylor says, “He’s not a sensitive guy, so that was rare, and then he said, ‘You’re No. 1.’ That got me feeling all warm inside.”
But though the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas' palatial venues highlight Taylor’s words, the streets of Little Rock are their substance.
In the ring, Jermain Taylor was declared champ of the middleweights. When he and Nelson returned to their home state, he was declared King of Arkansas.
“Arkansas is great place,” Taylor beams. “Everywhere I go I ain’t gotta pay for no more meals. They had a parade for me; what kind of stuff is that? As long as you got your state behind there ain’t nothing that can go wrong. Arkansas people… as long as you’re doing good and working hard, they’re behind you always.”
At heart, Taylor remains the same kid Nelson tasked with 10 pushups when he failed to say, "sir." But winning the middleweight strap has brought the champ more than just the adoration of Razorbacks. Before his triumph over Hopkins, Taylor spoke in short jabs, making his pointly simply and quietly. As middleweight champ of the world, Taylor throws blistering verbal combinations, hard, heavy and aimed at the head.
"In this fight, I’m showing no respect," Taylor blasted. "He showed me he can’t knock me out. He showed me he has no power. I’m coming at him."
As he prepares to face Hopkins for a second time, Taylor pulls no punches when it comes to the ex-champ.
"Hopkins disrespected the game of boxing,” Taylor says. “I understand if you think it was close or should’ve went the other way, I understand that. But he needs to stop crying and shut up. If he wants his belts back, come on and get them.”
Still, Taylor faces a skeptical public after the disputed first bout. In boxing, one bout can make you a legend. One punch can label you a fraud.
Hopkins says he wants the world to know the truth.
You want the truth on Taylor? Here it is: Taylor is bigger, faster and stronger than the near-41-year-old Hopkins will ever be again.
How good is he?
In a word? "Unbelievable."
In the opposite corner, Hopkins waits on the truth.
