Contender winner Mora looking for shot at champion Jermain Taylor

by greg st. martin / metro new york

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AUG 23, 2006

BOXING — When he was 23, Sergio Mora gave himself an ultimatum: Either you make it before your 25th birthday, or you quit boxing and find a new career.

A year later, Mora was still undefeated at 12-0, but without a promoter, he couldn’t get big fights or big paydays, and it seemed like his dream was slipping away.

Then “The Contender” came along. The next thing Mora knew, he was the show’s champion, he’d won the million dollars and he’d become a household name.

“That’s why I kept using the word ‘destiny’ on that show. I just needed a chance,” a humble Mora told Metro this week, as the 25-year-old prepares to tangle with Eric Regan in Sacramento, Calif., this Friday on ESPN.

Boxing on “The Contender” — the show that pits fighters against each other while they live in the same house — wasn’t as far a stretch for Mora as it might seem. When he was 15, Mora and his neighborhood friends in East L.A. started “barbeque boxing,” where they’d all get together for a cookout, and then proceed to beat each other up in the backyard.

Should he beat Regan, rumor has it Mora would get a crack at middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, who he actually faced — and lost to — during the Olympic trials in 2000.

“I won’t fight Jermain Taylor until all the naysayers, all the critics, accept the fact that it can be an intriguing fight,” Mora said. “If they say this is going to be a walk in the park for Taylor, or “give him a shot because they know his name, [then] bulls**t. I want the people to say this will be an intriguing fight.”