He Knows Now What to Expect

A word of advice to Meldrick Taylor on his forthcoming fight with Julio Cesar Chavez at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Sept. 17: If Chavez is still standing at the end of the 12-round fight, you lose. If he’s even conscious. Maybe, if he’s even alive.

You see, Chavez is one of those historical monuments like Grant’s Tomb or where George Washington slept. It can’t be tampered with, torn down or even defaced. Chavez is kind of an endangered species, protected by law.

Taylor, of all people, should know this. On March 17, 1990, he administered a fairly sound thrashing to Chavez for 11 1/2 rounds. No one had ever done that to Chavez, who was working on a string of 71 consecutive victories, most by knockout. Chavez was the biggest non-heavyweight draw in the fight business. For him to lose was not only a national calamity in Mexico but in America. At ringside, promoter Don King needed smelling salts. He looked heavenward for divine intervention.

He got something even surer. He got either the most squeamish referee in the history of the ring or the most cooperative. Richard Steele suddenly stopped the fight. The house won again.

Now, there is an axiom in the fight racket: “You can never stop a fight too soon.”

But with two seconds to go?

Even for the fight game, which has never been known for any high sense-making, it was bizarre. With 12 seconds to go in the 12-round bout, Chavez, behind on points and desperate, threw a pair of overhand rights that caught Taylor unaccountably on the jaw. The second blow floored him.

The referee began the count. When he reached five, Taylor got up. But even before that, the red ringpost light had flashed on, indicating there were 10 seconds left. Steele couldn’t miss it. He was standing two feet away from it, facing it. Nevertheless, when the count reached eight, he incredibly waved his arms and stopped the fight. Chavez was winner by TKO.

If Steele had reached out to dry Taylor’s gloves off--standard procedure after a knockdown--the bell would have rung, the bout would have been over. You stop a fight to save a fighter from further harm. There wasn’t time for Chavez to even get to him.

That set a pattern. From that day on, Chavez was as protected as the caribou or the Pacific grey whale.

His winning streak had reached 88 when he met the speedster challenger, Pernell Whitaker. Chavez had great difficulty establishing the whereabouts of Whitaker most of the evening. He knew Whitaker was there because he kept peppering Chavez with hard lefts and rights all night. The officials called it a draw. If it was a draw, so was World War II.

Two bouts later, Chavez lost for the first time in his career. Not even Steele could save him that night as Frankie Randall thoroughly outpointed Chavez, even floored him for the first time in his career.

The hemisphere didn’t exactly go into mourning, but the endangered species act was invoked again. In the rematch, the fighters butted heads. Chavez suffered a head gash, could not continue. By some complicated legerdemain, Chavez was declared the winner. Naturally. Under government protection. The officials knew their parts. I mean, you going to set fire to Lincoln’s log cabin? Let Chavez lose? Turn Appomattox into a drive-in?

Taylor knows what to expect. He can’t afford to butt heads, go down or probably even hit Chavez anywhere south of his haircut. The last fight taught him a lesson in dealing with this pugilistic artifact. You would have thought he was trying to draw pictures on the Washington Monument.

“I was coherent, conscious, even confident,” Taylor recalls. “I couldn’t believe it when he called that fight. I could have gone two more rounds, never mind two more seconds.”

It had its psychological effect. Taylor fought a couple of palookas, but his mind wasn’t in it. He let his weight balloon up so he could take on middleweights. Terry Norris stopped him in four, and then a clumsy Spaniard, Crisanto Espana, took his welterweight title.

“I was not focused mentally,” Taylor explains. “In this game, it’s not enough to work on the heavy bag or your skip rope, you got to condition the mind. Mine was messed up.”

Taylor has lost 14 pounds, eats the kind of food movie queens do and reads the kind of books they assign in Psych I. He is ready to rethread his career where it was severed.

And he thinks that if they’re so interested in preserving Chavez, they should hang him in the Louvre behind glass and rope him off. Or send him direct to Mt. Rushmore.

Taylor wants to make sure that if they give his opponent the victory this time, they’ll have to do it posthumously. Given past performances, don’t bet they won’t.

“Winner and still champion--the late Julio Cesar Chavez!”