Photo Credit: "David Algranati/The Fight Photos"
"Marvelous" Marquis Taylor has long been equally overlooked as he is supremely confident. The best of the 29-year-old from Houston was on display at the Ballroom Boardwalk in Atlantic City on Saturday. He was supposed to be just an opponent, a step up and quality name on the resume of Cuban Middleweight Yoelvis Gomez on his way to bigger and better things. The Cuban was also supposed to be the bigger, stronger, fighter, the naturally more gifted puncher. Taylor seemed not to care about any of those things either, as he boxed beautifully on the inside. The Texan fought around a pretty nasty cut around his right eye for almost the entire fight, dropped Gomez, and dominated throughout the 10-round affair.
After an excellent opening stanza for the Cuban, who dominated the action and opened a cut above the eye of Taylor, Gomez was never much of a threat again. The momentum shifted immediately. A looping right hand sent the A-side fighter to the canvas a minute into the round. From that point on, the awkward style of the Houstonian never allowed the Cuban to get comfortable, and the power from the alleged soft hitting proved not to be the case as another straight right hand that staggered Gomez in the fourth and late in the fifth another right hand badly rocked the Cuban once again. Gomez had a brief moment within the sixth. A short hook on the inside that phased Taylor. However, Taylor rallied back immediately with a pair of body shots. Taylo continued to make Gomez miss and run up the points, winning round after round. By the 10th round, Gomez was well aware that he needed a knockout and went for broke and had another moment with a well-paced uppercut that cut the attention of Taylor with just over a minute left in the fight. However, the GTexan survived the scare, ran out of the clock, and took a clear-cut decision by scores of 99-90 and 96-93X2 to move his record to 15-1-2 (1).
Taylor has now beaten five undefeated fighters and is 7-0 against Southpaws. Not bad for a career "B-side" who finally got the win he has long needed to elevate his status as a legitimate title contender.