By Tom Donelson

Sometimes, a fighter officially retires before his career even ends. When James Toney lost to Samuel Peter in their January rematch, it was obvious that we were witnessing the end of a career, even if James Toney does not officially hang up his gloves.

Last Friday night, Teddy Reid essentially did the same thing. Going into his main event fight against Richard Gutierrez, Reid's career was already riding on fumes. He only had one win in his last five fights with one draw in the mix. In his last fight with Verno Phillips, he went through a very tough war before he was ultimately stopped in the twelfth round.

Reid had one thing that other fighters feared, the right hand that often proved to be the equalizer. He was always in a fight but as his career moved forward, the one thing that Reid could not do was beat an elite fighter. 

He fought some of the best fighters in the welterweight and junior Middleweight divisions, but when he challenged excellent fighters such as Kermit Cintron and Ben Tackie; he came up short. Fighting other power fighters, he often found himself outgunned and going into the Gutierrez’s fight, he was fighting for his career.

In the opening round, the one thing that become obvious, was that whatever hand speed Reid possessed was no longer in existence. Gutierrez kept nailing Reid with solid right hands with little trouble. Gutierrez moved inside of Reid's power shots and simply nailed him with punches to the body, followed by hard blows to the head. Often, Reid failed to get himself in the right distance to nail his opponent with his own right hand by throwing punches that were too wide. He was simply unable to pull the trigger and Gutierrez made him pay. 

In the third round, Reid finally connected with something of significance against Gutierrez, but failed to change the tide as Gutierrez countered with even better punches. 

The dramatic end came in the fourth round. Reid was on the attack, but Gutierrez moved inside to continue his body shots. One body shot in particular, nailed Reid right below the belt line, and sent him down to the canvas while holding his groin in obvious pain. 

Reid was attempting to buy time as he knew that he could not get up at the count of ten. Using all of his experience, he was hoping that the referee would give him time to recover and that maybe the referee would declare the bodyshot a low blow. 

The referee did not agree with Reid's claim of a low blow, and counted him out.

By the fourth round, Reid already looked like a beaten fighter. His face was swollen and his left eye was red from the constant right hands he was eating. After only two rounds, he began to look like an old fighter and had all of the physical symptoms that came along with one. 

The power shots of Reid that nailed fighters in the past, failed to move Gutierrez, and his hand speed was no longer there. He could not get out of the way of his opponent's punches and his legs looked shaky. Reid lost a crucial fight, but this was one of many crucial fights that Reid has recently lost.

One does not end a career on one fight. But, when you see a good fighter lose to a similar quality opponents on a consistent basis, there is but one inalienable fact. The fighter can no longer compete at the highest level.

Reid has been a good fighter and produced some good performances, but now he can no longer compete with top ten fighters, much less top twenty. Still a main event fighter on selected show, he is slowly moving down the path where he becomes a name opponent upon a younger fighter’s resume. 

A puncher by nature, he's been in many wars and now the body shows the effects of a long valiant career. Reid may not hold a press conference to announce his retirement, but when Richard Gutierrez sent Reid down for the count, his career went down as well