Published: June 28, 2009 11:48 pm      

Taylor suffers his first loss

If you’d seen the other guy, you would have had a hard time figuring out who won Saturday night’s six-round cruiserweight bout in the Steel City Rumble in Youngstown, Ohio.

Johnstown boxer Andres Taylor suffered his first setback on Saturday night, losing a narrow 57-56 decision to Great Falls, Mont., native Leo Bercier.

“I was actually beating the guy in the first three rounds and it was a pretty easy fight,” Taylor said in an interview Sunday as he was heading to the movies with his children. “I almost had him out and I let up a little bit. He had a broken nose, a black eye and a broken hand and I didn’t have a scratch on me.”

Taylor was scored in the lead in the first three round and said he was trying to make it worth the price of admission for the fans.

But in the fourth round, things went awry.

“He threw me a haymaker in the fourth round and I went down,” Taylor said. “I jumped right back up, but I should have taken the eight seconds to clear my head before I got back into it. One punch got to me.”

Bercier won the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds.

“I learned a valuable lesson,” Taylor said. “You don’t ever take an opponent lightly. I broke the cardinal rule. I learned a lot and it was better to learn it at this stage of the game. It doesn’t kill me in rankings.”

Taylor (8-1-1, 4 KOs), billed as the Fighting Pride of Johnstown, Pa., and Bercier were the main event on Saturday’s fight card.

Taylor is set to fight again on Aug. 1 in York.

“I took him a little bit too lightly,” Taylor said about Bercier. “I won’t do that again.”