Ex-Champ Fights Fraud Charges, Comeback Doubters

PHILADELPHIA - A badly battered Meldrick Taylor struggled off the canvas just seconds before the final bell in his championship fight with Julio Cesar Chavez. Asked twice by the referee if he could continue, he gave no response.

The lapse cost him more than a fight he had dominated. It became a defining moment for Taylor, sending his career into a tailspin.

The millions he had earned after winning a gold medal as a featherweight at the 1984 Olympics were soon gone - and so was the glory. He lost other fights he should have won, became a preacher in a religious sect and was charged with insurance fraud.

Now, eight years after that first fight with Chavez, Taylor still hopes boxing will bring an honest buck.

But his latest comeback has been dealt a serious blow. A week ago, Larry Hazzard, commissioner of the New Jersey Athletic Control Board, called off Taylor's scheduled bout against Lonnie Smith on May 16 in Atlantic City and questioned whether he should ever fight again.

Hazzard said Taylor's promoters failed to provide commission-ordered medical test results he asked for three weeks ago. And he said he hasn't been impressed with Taylor's skills.

"Certainly, we can allow for a certain amount of slippage in a person's abilities," Hazzard said. "Meldrick Taylor, at this point, has really gone below that point where he should still be fighting."

Taylor couldn't be reached for comment. His home telephone was disconnected, his lawyer didn't know how to reach him and he wasn't at a Philadelphia gym where he normally trains.

"I'll reconfirm with his trainers what kind of condition he's in and what skills he has," said lawyer Leon Silverman. "After that we'll do everything we possibly can to see if he can take that fight."

Taylor has said he needs to get back in the ring after a yearlong suspension for missing a fight.

"I've got to make a living," he said.

Taylor, a Philadelphian, started making a living with his hands at an early age. He started boxing when he was 8, became a millionaire in his teens, and started wearing fine clothes and driving a Mercedes soon after.

"I was in awe of him," said Cliffae Wallace, mother of Meldrick Jr., 5, and Farrah, 2.

She can't forget her first post-fight party.

"A lot of celebrities were there and there was a lot of attention, and it was kind of weird to feel that for the first time," she said. "You got a big rush."

Four years after winning his gold medal, Taylor won the IBF junior welterweight title. He had never lost a fight when he arrived for his bout on March 17, 1990, against Chavez, then 68-0.

In a battle of two fighters in their prime, he dominated for 11 rounds. But the Mexican champion pummeled Taylor in the final round and stunned him with a devastating right hook. Referee Richard Steele, in one of the more controversial decisions in modern boxing, waved the fight over with just two seconds left.

Taylor went on to win the WBA welterweight belt in 1991, but the Chavez fight had taken its toll. Taylor lost two straight bouts in 1992, then dropped the rematch against his nemesis in 1994. His chance to erase his greatest loss gone, he was never the same in the ring.

Even with his career on the decline, Taylor fed his reputation as a cocksure, arrogant fighter never afraid to express his opinion.

"Whatever you told him he knew 10 times over," Wallace said.

She never learned to live with the nights he would stay out late at clubs. She finally left him after another of his affairs.

"I was reckless," Taylor said. "I was never involved with drugs or nothing, but it was a very high-profile life. Partying every day, going out with women."

The millions, meanwhile, slipped through his hands. Exactly how it happened isn't clear.

"Probably nonsense. Bad investments, people taking advantage of him, gifts, a high lifestyle," said Alan Abrams of Allied Mortgage Inc., the lender backing Taylor in his comeback. "One inappropriate thing after another."

Taylor invested in food carts, but workers stole the profits. He opened a hair salon, but that folded. He lavished money on friends, casual acquaintances and women.

"His heart's too big and he had the bad fortune to trust the wrong people. Some people have taken him good. And he's made some mistakes," said Wendell Keene, a friend Taylor calls his godfather. "He was like a kid on a merry-go-round. You don't take time to sit back and evaluate things."

When he was champion, Taylor would sometimes hand friends $5,000. Now, that's not much less than what he gets for a fight.

But however rich his fight purse, he has always had trouble living within his means, if prosecutors are right. In November 1994, already two months behind on his $1,600-a-month car payments, he reported his red Mercedes 500SL Coupe stolen. But when the car was recovered a year later, police found a receipt for a cell phone a "Mel" had bought in October 1995.

"All I can say is he'll be vindicated," lawyer Richard Scott said. "Anybody's name can be put on a receipt."

Poorer, more humble

Even with creditors at his door, changing his spending habits has proven difficult: Taylor still rents a white, stretch Lincoln Town Car with a driver to get to the gym.

Losing the second Chavez fight left him poorer, and seemed to change him in other ways. He became a little more humble. He found stability in a fringe religion. Boxing wasn't a road to fame and riches; it became just a job.

Others say he doesn't have the hunger to return to the top. Boxing writers declared his career dead last April after he won two ugly fights, lost another and missed a fourth, standing up ESPN2 and getting suspended by the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission.

This winter, he did the only thing he could.

He called up Willie Rush, his original trainer, found a promoter and got the fight against Smith. The IBC welterweight belt would have been at stake. More important, he would have received $15,000.

"Very modest pay," he called it.

Broad and Girard in Philadelphia is the best place to see how Taylor's life has changed. Lunch-hour traffic roars past. People in buses and cars and street-corner food carts peer quizzically out their windows at the black men with the blaring microphone. They're preaching to . . . no one.

"Read!" one man shouts.

"The Jews are black unto the Earth," Taylor says. A white turban covers his cornrows, and he holds a Bible with a snap-close leather cover. A man with him hands out fliers declaring blacks the true Jews.

Taylor discovered the University of Practical Knowledge in 1994 during a trip to the bank. His girlfriend waited in the car for 15 minutes, half an hour, 45 minutes. Finally, she found him. He stood transfixed before the preachers.

"I was befuddled at first," he remembers. "Then I said, `Damn, I'm a Jew.' "

"I'm not fearful of what I believe in. This is not our message. This is God's message."

For a while, he considered giving up boxing. Even when he started boxing again in 1996, he couldn't focus enough to train.

"He was torn about what to do," said John McClary, his trainer at the time. "Should I box or should I preach?"

He finally decided he could do both.

Taylor had expected the next few months - the fight and a trial, if there is one - to determine whether he would add a chapter to that old boxing story: from fame to failure to some form of modest happiness.

He was running every day, after all, eating right, working out at a cramped gym above a drive-through beer distributor.

"I sat down and talked to him," said Everton Boland, Garden State Boxing Academy promoter. "I said, `This is it. This is your last hurrah in boxing. This is your last payday. You've got to make it worth it.' If he pulls it off, he's got a good payday in front of him. Right?"

Now, Hazzard's decision has again put Taylor's boxing future in doubt.