By: Ricky Ray Taylor

I wrote this a year or so ago about my old man. It’s been circulated around the web some and was initially posted on my old stomping ground “braggingrightscorner.com”. My dad passed away 2 weeks ago and I thought it may be appropriate to send it out one more time with a few revisions:

I started fighting in ’82 and my dad held the reigns in front of me & was also my shadow in all my steps. He came to all of the fights, before orchestrating the majority of shows on the coast. Eventually he got his license to keep time at all of the shows. (Remember, 1982 we’re talking the HAMMER & BELL here!) My old man was a “Mr. Fixit” around the house and he thought that he could do something better for Boxing by way of keeping time. He expressed aspirations to BUILD a better Boxing time-clock. From scratch my dad broke out his tool box, saws & glue, spray paint – he went to the lumber yard for wood, bought some horns and technical gadgets and he slowly pieced together a clock.

What looked like a WOODEN BOX with 2 horns protruding from the top of it – for lack of anymore excess imagination – he called it THE TAYLOR TIMER.

He brought the first one to my old gym, Gulfport Boxing club and started working the kinks out through the endless rounds of sparring. Soon he was bringing this “box” to local amateur shows then tournaments before getting calls to time the back-alley pro fights which were inundating the Mississippi gulf-coast in the early 80’s. In no time he whipped out maybe 10 or 20 of these timers and selling them for $200 a pop along with some MUCH needed and hard to come by FUNDS in the “dirty south” – he was beginning to get plenty of notoriety on the gulf coast. National amateur tournaments soon followed as did professional fight-cards and numerous television appearances excited about the NEW “gadget” in such an old-fashioned, TRADITIONAL sport.

*Keep in mind that my dad was a country farmboy who didn’t graduate high-school and was light-years away from a money-making landshark mentality. He was wise enough however to go BACK to college in order to earn a BS & then a MASTERS in English. He went from substitute teacher, to principal to Superintendent of Schools – all by the time he was 26! He was an entertainer by trade who played guitar and told dirty jokes on stage for money. He just happened to be a techie who dearly loved to build things. Yet the business of taking care of “business” was my dads weakness and it wasn’t long after his clocks hit the Boxing mainstream that these SHARKS set their eyes on him. The legalities behind TRADEMARKS & COPYRIGHT agreements were completely alien to his way of thinking when the extent of his business dealings didn’t go much further than a handshake.

I remember sitting in front of the television one day and my dad asked me how I thought it would work out if he added a different sound on the timer when there was :30 left in the round. -an “extra” bell of sorts. Even as I suggested it to be a pretty neat idea, before I could tell him so he was already off and running with it. With his mind still spinning, he added LIGHTS to his brainstorm and within a few days had drawn a REVISED version of the Taylor Timer – this one composed entirely of aluminum, screen-printing, buttons and flashing lights. My dad enlisted myself, my mom and some friends from the gym to PRODUCE 100 of these NEW Timers which were then shipped off to Ringside Products. We also took an “unpattoned” version to EVERLAST… and with no LEGAL protection overshadowing his invention however ….. well, you know the story. So, 27 years after my first fight I bask daily in a streaming current of ‘what ifs’ & ‘coulda beens’ in an ocean full of past glories.

EVERYTIME I walk in a gym & hear the ringing of my pops invention – my stomach turns a little from what ‘didn’t happen’. It’s a little odd now, but at times I can hear schools of SHARKS with their bellies full of Taylor Timers swim by – smiling at me with their razor-sharp teeth. ~Ricky Ray Taylor~ www.BoxerDRILLZ.com