Taylor’s Luck Runs Out as Time Doesn’t : Boxing: Chavez, behind on two of three scorecards, keeps his belt and adds another when referee makes controversial decision to stop fight.

This began as Meldrick Taylor’s lucky day.

A $100 chip rolled to a stop near his feet as he strolled through the Las Vegas Hilton casino on his way to check the scales before the weigh-in for his junior welterweight title bout against Julio Cesar Chavez.

Nobody claimed it.

“Let’s split it 50-50,” Taylor said to Philadelphia Daily News sports columnist Stan Hochman.

“No,” said Hochman, “I’ll bet the whole $100 on you and then we can split even more.”

‘I’m not a gambling man,” said Meldrick, who promptly took $50, meaning he grossed $1,000,050.00 for the day, including his fight purse.

But Taylor’s luck, strength, good strategy and portion of the junior welterweight title ran out on him in the 12th round Saturday night.

If referee Richard Steele hadn’t stopped the fight with only two seconds remaining in the last round, Taylor would be the undisputed champion today.

But Steele did wave his arms to signal a cease fire and Julio Cesar Chavez is el campeon.

“I didn’t know how much time was left,” said Steele, although red lights indicating fewer than 10 seconds are left in a round were blinking just above Taylor’s right shoulder.

“But it didn’t make any difference. I would have stopped the fight anyway. My only concern is the condition of the fighter.”

Steele, a former light heavyweight contender from Los Angeles, said this was one of the greatest of the 70 world title fights he has worked.

His decision to stop the fight also made it one of the most controversial.

Taylor, who had been knocked down for a count of six, was ahead by seven points on one judge’s card and five on another.

This was a difficult fight to score--Taylor landed more often, but his face was a mess during the late rounds because Chavez landed the harder punches. The other judge had Chavez ahead by one point.

But Taylor would have won a split decision if the fight had lasted two seconds longer, and this is what made his manager, Lou Duva, so furious.

“It was a helluva way to lose a fight,” Duva shouted in the interview room while his fighter was being taken to a nearby hospital for repairs.

“We won the fight for 11 rounds, 2 minutes and 58 seconds and then they took it away from us. The referee didn’t do the job he should have done.”

Actually, Steele claimed that Duva helped him do his job by climbing into the ring before the fight was stopped.

“I saw the cornerman (Duva) come in and that made me feel that I made the right decision,” Steele said.

Ringside observers thought Duva didn’t leave the corner until after Steele had stopped the fight and wondered how the referee could have seen him while he was looking into Taylor’s eyes.

Naturally, the winner had a beef, too.

“The judges’ cards in favor of Taylor were way out of line,” Chavez said through a translator. “They were blind.”

For sure, Chavez would have won a beauty contest over Taylor at the end of 11 rounds, 2 minutes and 58 seconds.

The pride of Culiacan, Mexico, was almost unmarked and still unbeaten after 69 fights.

But, he did acknowledge that Taylor’s considerable skills had made it a difficult evening for him.

“He was faster than me and he was stronger than me,” Chavez said. “But I had more heart than him.”

That could be debated, but so could Taylor’s strategy in the 12th.

He could have run from Chavez, lost the round, and still won the fight.

Billy Conn made the same mistake against Joe Louis in a heavyweight title fight on a June night in 1941 after giving him a boxing lesson for 12 rounds.

Louis knocked out Conn in the 13th round and easily won a rematch.

Chavez and Taylor will probably be asked to fight again. For action and controversy, the Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson fight had nothing on this one.