Twenty-Twenty Hindsight: Pavlik and Taylor Both Prove Something and Floyd Mayweather in WWE

I've got to hand it to my brother Uatu: he called Saturday's rematch between Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor correctly. I figured that Pavlik winning by decision would be the least likely possible outcome, yet that's exactly how it went down.

Boxing is the rare sport in the sense that a win doesn't necessarily leave you looking good and a loss isn't always the end of the world. On some occasions both the winner and loser come out of a fight in good shape, and that seems to be the case here.

Pavlik showed he was more than just a knockout artist, earning positive reviews for his improved defensive skills and outpointing a guy who was able to hang with the likes of Bernard Hopkins and Winky Wright. He's already expressed his desire to unify the middleweight titles, and unless Arthur Abraham is a lot better than I suspect, he shouldn't have much trouble doing it.

On the other side, silencing some of your critics is always fun, and Taylor should have accomplished that even in defeat. Many people acted like a second knockout loss was a foregone conclusion, but he gave more than a fair account of himself. Most importantly, he showed heart, which was a question he had never really answered to this point. Rising in weight class makes sense for him, though we'll see if a lack of power becomes an issue as he does it.

From the sublime to the surreal, one of my other writing interests intersected with this site over the past 36 hours as Floyd Mayweather popped out at the WWE pay-per-view No Way Out. Money apparently legitimately broke Big Show's nose, leading to another confrontation tonight on Raw.

Rumors were flying that Mayweather would be in the corner of a wrestler at WrestleMania, but it now looks like Floyd will take on Big Show himself. Of course it immediately calls to mind Mike Tyson's role at WrestleMania XIV, though if Mayweather really is going to be involved in some kind of match, that promises to be a whole different kind of spectacle.

Ten years ago, the WWE was still on the way up toward its peak popularity, while Tyson was the most famous boxer in the world. It was a bigger deal for Iron Mike to be on the show than vice versa. Things aren't the same today, with the WWE much less visible to the general public and Mayweather - though he's coming off a huge year financially and did his Dancing With the Stars stint to reach some different demographics - is not as big a name as Tyson was then. Floyd and the WWE both stand to gain a little bit if they pull off something interesting.

One thing's for sure: you never can tell what Money's next career move is going to be. That fact alone keeps him high on the entertainment value scale.