Meldrick Taylor

[Anthony342]

Yeah with Chavez-Taylor 1 and Tyson-Ruddock 1, he made crappy stoppages. Ironically, I saw a video of an early Pacquiao fight in the Philippines where Steele was the ref and stopped the fight way later than he should have and was lucky the opponent wasn't seriously injured. Manny scored so many knockdowns in it, but Richard Steele called a lot of them slips, until Pacquiao kept knocking his opponent down until it finally was stopped, which luckily made the bad refereeing a moot point. Chavez even called his TKO win in the first Taylor fight a gift, so even he knew he was lucky there. The sad thing is Chavez Sr. is a tough, badass ATG, who was an accurate puncher and could land lethal body shots, so he never needed anyone's help to win most of his fights.

[The Old LefHook]

I hear you. Steele was not the only referee making mistakes in the ring. Boxing can never be free of those, apparently. I forget who the bum was that stopped Leonard/ Benitez in the last round because of a little cut on Benitez's forehead. Benitez would have lost a decision anyway, but there was no reason to make that a KO loss.

[ShoulderRoll]

Chavez himself could absorb punches like they were nothing. By losing the fight unofficially, Chavez showed he was the better man and precluded the necessity for rematches because Taylor was shot after the first fight, a shell; Chavez had destroyed his spirit and resistance.

Taylor actually put together a nice little win streak at welterweight after the Chavez fight.

It wasn't until after the ill-fated move to fight Norris for the 154 lb belt that he started becoming a shell of himself.