Boxing champ Taylor to undergo mental evaluation

Author Photo
Jermain Taylor - CROPPED

Jermain Taylor, the champion middleweight boxer, has been ordered by an Arkansas judge to undergo a mental evaluation.

The judge granted a request on Tuesday from Taylor's attorneys that the fighter be moved to a hospital for his well-being.

He was arrested last year in the shooting of his cousin and this year for opening fire and threatening a family during an altercation after a Martin Luther King Jr parade. He was charged with aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a minor.

"Everybody is saying this isn't the Jermain Taylor they know," Taylor's attorney Hubert Alexander is quoted as telling Arkansas Online. "We're trying to figure out who in the heck it is."

Now 36, Taylor is a two-time world middleweight champion who unified the division with the first of two 2005 wins of the great Bernard Hopkins.

He currently holds the IBF world championship belt, which he had been due to defend against Sergio Mora next month, only for that fight to be cancelled.

Taylor is due back in court on February 10 and the deadline for his evaluation is April 27.

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Jordan Heck Photo

Jordan Heck is a social media producer at Sporting News