I am a firm believer that in sports, in almost every case, talent wins out in the end. All sports are overflowing with great underdog stories, and players or teams that achieved more than they were supposed to.

In 2006, Jeff Lacy was supposed to be the man to beat Joe Calzaghe. Quite clearly, he wasn't that man. It was talent that won out, even though that is also an underdog story.

Tonight, on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Jermain Taylor was the heavy favorite. His talent delivered. With a clinical performance and some amazing efficiency, the former middleweight champion got back into the win column with a dominant decision win over ex-super middleweight titleholder Lacy, taking the fight on scores of 118-110 and 119-109 (twice).

The final punch stats tell the story very well. Taylor landed 213 of 442 punches, for an amazing 48% connect rate. Compare that to Lacy's 75/443 (18%), and you can see why it was such an easy fight to score.

Lacy, for all his faults, is a very tough guy. Taylor rattled him repeatedly early in the fight, and looked like he might even score a KO. But Lacy did what most hurt fighters try to do -- he clinched, he hugged, he fell on Taylor, he did whatever he could do to get to that one minute rest period between rounds. It kept him upright for 36 minutes. And outside of a nice fifth round where he did appear to hurt Taylor and there was a mildly controversial non-knockdown of Jermain involved, staying upright was all he did.

Taylor established his superiority quickly, pumping his jab into Lacy's face the whole night, landing clean power shots, and thwarting almost all attempts made by the robotic, slow-handed, flat-footed Lacy. In short, Jermain Taylor whooped Jeff Lacy, and whooped him good. Had Lacy been favored to beat Taylor as he was with Calzaghe, I think the reaction to this performance would be similar. Taylor owned the ring.

Taylor said after the fight that he'd be willing to fight Calzaghe or anyone else that's put in front of him. The HBO team suggested during the fight that a bout with Mikkel Kessler would be a good one, and I certainly agree. There are lots of good fights for Jermain at 168, which is a quickly developing division with lots of quality fighters. What he does next will at least surely wait until the December 6 fight to crown a new WBC super middleweight belt holder between Carl Froch and Jean Pascal, the title to which Taylor is now mandatory challenger.

As far as "Left Hook" Lacy goes, he said before the fight that he knew he had to win this one or that fighting at this level again would be tough to do. He's very right. He's clearly not the fighter he was hyped to be. And since that shoulder surgery, even his nickname doesn't work. Lacy has some thinking to do, let's put it that way.

Frankly, there's no reason Jermain Taylor can't fight his way to the top of the 168-pound division, and back up into the pound-for-pound top 10 that he inhabited for a couple of years. He's got a shot against anyone from 168 to 175, I think. Tonight was a good first step back on the road.

The HBO broadcast starts at 10:15 ET, and we'll be live and ready to go for the night's main event in Nashville. It is the only fight televised in the States by HBO.

As an aside, I want to note that Taylor-Lacy is the 100th round-by-round coverage for Bad Left Hook. It's actually a bit more than that if you count two cards within the same post (HBO v. Showtime nights here and there), but this is Fight Night/Fight Day/whatever post No. 100.

via www.hbo.com

The last time Little Rock's Jermain Taylor was celebrated for a win, Chris Brown's "Run It!" was No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard chart, Roger Ebert was preparing to name the dreadful Crash as the best movie of the year, and Seth Rogen was fourth banana in The 40-Year Old Virgin.

It was December 3, 2005, when Taylor successfully defended the middleweight championship of the world against Bernard Hopkins, the man whose long reign Taylor had ended four and a half months earlier.

Since then, Taylor's career has taken a bit of a swan dive. For whatever reason, Taylor replaced trainer Pat Burns after the second Hopkins fight, going instead with Hall of Fame trainer Emmanuel Steward. In their first fight together against Winky Wright in June 2006, the lack of chemistry was apparent to anyone with at least one eye and/or one ear.

That performance from Taylor was the first sign that things weren't all going to be rosy with Steward, and that the wins over Hopkins could be nearly forgotten with poor follow-up bouts. It is one of the roughest parts of being the hot name in boxing -- it can all go away, very quickly, if you don't live up to the highest possible expectations.

After the draw with Wright, Taylor decided to stick with Steward, and to close out '06, he took a fight with former junior middleweight belt holder Kassim Ouma. Ouma, at 5'8", struggled to do anything with Taylor, though his game performance made the thoroughly one-sided fight watchable anyway.

For 2007, the Taylor camp needed to step it back up and get their guy a win over a credible middleweight. Instead, they offered "Contender" season one champion Sergio Mora a title shot, which Mora infamously turned down because he felt a fight in Memphis too heavily favored Taylor. There was talk of vicious puncher Edison Miranda, but instead, Taylor and team went with then-IBF junior middleweight titlist Cory Spinks, a notorious stink-out fighter whose boxing skills could make anyone look bad.

Taylor clearly won the fight -- though judge Dick Flaherty scored it 117-111 for Spinks. But it was not entertaining. It was a Spinks Special, as Cory laid his noxious stank all over the bout and Taylor, despite clear size and power advantages, never attempted to press.

Making matters worse, the undercard featured Edison Miranda taking on Kelly Pavlik in an eliminator bout that wowed the crowd with its constant action. Pavlik wound up battering Miranda over seven rounds. Later, after the main event had clearly seen the crowd turn against the fighters, Manny Steward told Taylor in the corner that he wished that they had fought Miranda, as he had pushed for.

And though Taylor had said he'd move up to super middleweight after the Spinks fight, he accepted the rising challenge of Kelly Pavlik in September. After flooring Pavlik in the second round, Taylor wilted under constant pressure late in the seventh, and was knocked out.

It was his first loss. And it was his last fight with Manny Steward in his corner. While preparing for a catchweight rematch with Pavlik, longtime Taylor friend and mentor Ozell Nelson was promoted to head trainer. The two worked well together in the rematch, though Taylor lost a hard-fought decision.

It has been nine months since Taylor has been in the ring, the longest break of his professional career. Tonight, he squares off with former U.S. Olympic roommate Jeff Lacy, whose career is also in need of some redemption, and at the very least, a win.

It's a major crossroads fight for both guys, obviously. A third straight loss for Taylor would be absolutely devastating. Another loss for Lacy would cause people to essentially write him off as a lot of hype that can't compete with world class fighters.

With the hunger both must have coming in, there is a major chance for some fireworks. Both can punch and need to do something special.

The winner will also be in line for a shot at the winner of the Carl Froch-Jean Pascal fight on December 6, which will crown a new WBC super middleweight titleholder. Whether the winners of the two fights ever actually hook up is certainly no guarantee, but it's even more motivation.

Taylor-Lacy will air tonight on HBO at 10:15 ET. It appears as though HBO is putting the Calzaghe-Jones replay on after the live fight, which is always nice, and we'll be here with live, round-by-round coverage and scoring.

On the heels of Joe Calzaghe's one-sided win over Roy Jones, Jr., will come the return to the ring and spotlight of arguably Calzaghe's most talked-about opponent, Tampa's Jeff Lacy.

Hopkins and Jones were bigger names; time has taught us that Mikkel Kessler was a tougher test and a better fighter; and Calzaghe probably has a good handful of wins that, with hindsight available, were better than the victory over Lacy.

But the Calzaghe-Lacy fight on March 4, 2006, at the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester, was one for the record books in many respects, and it is the fight that delivered Joe Calzaghe without any questions to the world stage, and the fight that has haunted the career of Lacy ever since.

Calzaghe, at 40-0 and having held the WBO super middleweight title for nearly nine years, was a massive underdog on both sides of the pond. In the States, Calzaghe was seen as just another European fighter who would wilt against the powerful attack of Lacy, the muscular, Tyson-like American star who came in with a 21-0 record, featuring 17 wins by way of knockout.

The American sportsbooks had Lacy as the favorite. The British sportsbooks had Lacy as the favorite. At BoxingScene.com, 27 staffers gave their opinions, and 19 of them picked Lacy, most by knockout. They were not alone. Doghouse Boxing was 11-2 in favor of Lacy. The Sweet Science staff was 12-1 for "Left Hook" Lacy.

It truly cannot be appreciated how favored Jeff Lacy was to beat Joe Calzaghe right now, I don't think. So far removed from the fight, it seems ludicrous that 12 of 13, 11 of 13, or 19 of 27 knowledgable boxing fans would pick Jeff Lacy over Calzaghe. But they did.

Most expected Lacy to be emphatic in his victory, too. Alex Stone of The Sweet Science described Lacy as a fighter who "hits as hard as Tyson and is as fast as 'Pretty Boy' Floyd." Today, both claims seem laughable. At the time, they weren't as crazy as that sounds.

What was clear early in that fateful fight was that pretty much to a man (or a woman, if you are one), everyone had underestimated Joe Calzaghe, who had Lacy frustrated and overwhelmed before American fans, in particular, could even fully formulate the thought that perhaps this Lacy wasn't all he was cracked up to be.

Most memorable, without question, was Calzaghe returning to his corner at one point and telling his father-trainer, Enzo, "He can't hit for shit!" This after Calzaghe had taken some good shots from Lacy, who was supposed to be one of the best punchers on the planet.

Here was Calzaghe, the man whose career was the one in question, battering the image-driven Lacy, whose cut-from-marble physique made him instantly attractive. It was the athletic, somewhat stringy Calzaghe, with his pit-pat punches landing endlessly, that embarrassed and dominated Jeff Lacy, bloodying him and sending him back to America with his tail between his legs. The damage was done.

According to CompuBox, Calzaghe connected on 351 of 952 punches, for a 37% rate. Compare that to Lacy, at 116 of 444, for 26%. Lacy was dizzied and befuddled at almost every moment of the bout; he looked like he had no business in the same ring as Joe Calzaghe. Even Lacy's trainer, Dan Birmingham, could do nothing but applaud Calzaghe. "Calzaghe put on a clinic," he said. "He showed he is a master of distance and timing."

After that win, Calzaghe took on Sakio Bika, who would gain fame later as the winner of season three of "The Contender." After their bout, Calzaghe called Bika a "horrible, dirty fighter." He also expressed disappointment at being matched with "Contender" season one star Peter Manfredo, Jr., after Bika, and said he wanted to get back to fighting the big fights.

He did that in November of 2007 when he took on Mikkel Kessler, the Dane who was the only other man on the planet that could make any reasonable claim to being the best super middleweight in the world. Calzaghe outpointed Kessler with another remarkable performance, and even detractors had to then concede that Calzaghe was a great fighter, and quite probably the best super middleweight of all-time.

But what of the loser, Jeff Lacy? The former U.S. Olympian saw a highly-promising career all but vanish that night in Manchester. So thorough was the beating he took that nothing could be salvaged from the fight as a positive. Lacy was humiliated by Calzaghe on the world stage. It was the biggest fight of either man's career, and one of them made the absolute most of it. The other was simply shut out and shut up.

Since the loss, Lacy has fought only three times, and you wouldn't go so far as to call any of them "big" fights. He took on Vitali Tsypko on a Winky Wright undercard in December 2006, tearing his labrum in the process. He won a majority decision (96-94, 96-94, 95-95) and failed to impress or begin to wipe away the memories of the Calzaghe fight. Personally, I thought Tsypko did enough to win.

After a year off, Lacy was given the main undercard spot on the Mayweather-Hatton pay-per-view, facing fellow past Calzaghe victim Manfredo. With a chance to further remove himself from his one loss, Lacy was again slow, robotic, and unimpressive; he beat Manfredo 95-94, 96-93, and 97-92. Personally, again, I thought Manfredo did enough to win the fight. In both instances, I should note, I felt the fights were very close.

In being such close affairs, the ghosts of the Calzaghe fight continued to haunt Lacy. The wins only further served as questions of Lacy's true ability. Not only did Calzaghe make it clear that he wasn't all that his hype said he was, but now the likes of Tsypko and Manfredo were making us wonder if he was even a top 10-level fighter to begin with. Turns out he wasn't great; how good is he?

Lacy fought again earlier this year, main eventing on ESPN2 against rugged veteran Epifanio Mendoza. The rough, exciting brawl was won by Lacy via majority decision (96-94, 97-93, 95-95), and helped to position "Left Hook" for another shot at a major fight. Old Olympic teammate Jermain Taylor, coming off of two losses to Kelly Pavlik, was looking to move up to super middleweight. He needed an opponent, and Lacy's name kept coming up.

They signed the deal, though Lacy tried to talk about retiring after being insulted by the money offer. This Saturday night on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Memphis, Tennessee, Taylor and Lacy, two fighters that desperately need this win, will lock horns.

While Joe Calzaghe tours the States defeating legends and giving his sealed Hall of Fame case a few more embellishments, Jeff Lacy is simply looking to survive as a professional fighter. His 24-1 record is misleading; it might as well be 24-5 at this point. For Lacy, it has been an uphill climb to regain respect since the Calzaghe loss, and his performances haven't had him scaling the mountain at much of a clip.

If Jeff Lacy loses to Jermain Taylor, as most feel he will, his place in boxing is very unclear. Where does he go then? Does he have it in him to accept a role as Professional Opponent, hoping to turn that into a spoiler casting? It has worked for many fighters over the years, but Lacy has never given the impression that he has that sort of dedication to boxing. He wanted big money for this Taylor fight despite the fact that nobody has really carried about him in two and a half years. He sees himself as a star, perhaps because he was told for so long that he was The Next Big Thing in American boxing.

Should Lacy be unsuccessful this Saturday, he just won't have many options, barring it being some sort of Fight of the Year candidate performance. And right now, he can look at himself backed against the wall and trace it all back to that night in Manchester, when he was demoralized by a better fighter.

It was the night that truly made Joe Calzaghe a global star. And it was the night that poked a giant hole in the myth of Jeff Lacy. Whereas 30 months ago most thought it silly to consider Calzaghe winning, it now seems silly to consider them as being anywhere near the same level. Perception can change that fast. Just ask Jeff Lacy.

Source: Tampa Tribune

Jeff Lacy's big retirement lasted all of a few days, as the proposed fight between the Tampa-based fighter and his 2000 U.S. Olympic teammate is back on for November 15. Lacy has been given a slight raise in pay, though I'd guess not exactly what he'd been hoping for.

I maintain that Lacy is an idiot with an inflated sense of self-worth and a belief that he means a lot more than anyone else thinks he does in the world of boxing.

You know, having watched Lacy's last four fights, I can't see anything less than a Taylor domination, either a knockout or a very wide decision. Jermain is a big step up from the likes of Epi Mendoza, Peter Manfredo and Vitali Tsypko (and I know Lacy was hampered with an injury during the Tsypko fight). Jermain fought very well twice against Kelly Pavlik and lost. It was the best he'd looked since twice topping Bernard Hopkins.

How does Lacy beat Taylor? His gun-and-pray offense just isn't good enough against a world-class fighter, which Taylor still is. This might wind up being Jeff's real retirement.