Kelly Pavlik gets up and takes the title

Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor had been on the same path once. Both went to the United States Olympic trials in 2000. Pavlik lost narrowly. Taylor went to Sydney and came home with a bronze medal.

By 2007 Taylor was middleweight champion, the man who had ended Bernard Hopkins's long reign, with an exclusive deal with HBO. Pavlik, from Youngstown, Ohio, was unbeaten and coming off savage stoppages of José Luis Zertuche and Edison Miranda. When they met at Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, the crowd was overwhelmingly on the challenger's side.

The second round

It nearly ended early, and not the way Pavlik's supporters wanted. In the second round Taylor landed a right that buckled Pavlik's legs, followed it with a flurry, and put him down on all fours with a minute and 40 seconds still to go.

Pavlik got up. The referee, Steve Smoger, let it continue, and Pavlik survived the round. On HBO, Jim Lampley summed it up: "What an assault, and what a survival!"

Coming back

The remarkable thing is how quickly Pavlik recovered. In the third round he backed Taylor into a corner and landed lefts and rights to the head. The fight had become a real contest. By the end of the fifth Pavlik was bleeding from the nose and mouth. The crowd, largely on his side, chanted his name.

The seventh

In the seventh, Pavlik caught Taylor with a big right hand in the centre of the ring. Taylor went back into a corner with his arms hanging, hurt. Pavlik threw two big uppercuts, one from each hand, and Taylor crumpled to the canvas.

Pavlik was 32–0 and the new champion. Taylor had lost for the first time in his career.

Afterwards

They fought again, and Pavlik won again. But it is the first fight that is remembered, because of the shape of it: a challenger nearly stopped in the second round who got up, fought his way back into it, and took the title five rounds later.