With a crunching right hand to the top of the head, Jermain Taylor took out hopelessly overmatched Alex Rios in less than a minute on Friday Night Fights. Rios had no business in the ring with Taylor, but truth be told, few middleweights are on young Jermain's level. In fact, at 25, the former bronze medalist should be entering his physical prime in the next year or so, by which time he figures to establish himself as the second best middleweight in the world.

Taylor is big and strong. His above-average handspeed, combined with his very good punching power and above-average mobility and boxing skills, make the young contender the heir apparent at 160 pounds. The question is, will Jermain attempt to take the crown by force, or will he wait until the current king abdicates the throne?

A couple of years ago it seemed unlikely that champion Bernard Hopkins would still be fighting today. After a lengthy but unspectacular title reign, Hopkins finally delivered his career-defining fight in late 2001, against welterweight cum junior middleweight cum middleweight destroyer Felix Trinidad. After 11½ nearly perfect rounds against Tito, the champ scored his crowning-jewel TKO.

On his way to the locker room after the fight, Hopkins told me that with his legacy and financial future secure, he was seriously contemplating retirement. Over the next couple of years he indeed seemed to be in quasi-retirement, fighting once a year, and against less-than-top opposition.

Was Hopkins still head-and-shoulders above the rest of the division? It was hard to tell. He wasn't fighting anyone against whom his level could be gauged.

There was brave talk in boxing circles about one of the much younger (than Hopkins anyway) 147- or 154-pound stars moving up to 160 and taking a shot at the champ. Oscar De La Hoya, Shane Mosley, Winky Wright, Vernon Forrest, Fernando Vargas: How might these younger tigers fare against the old lion? When it was difficult to tell how much the old lion had left, such talk got louder and louder.

Then they fed the old lion a real opponent -- William Joppy. After 12 bruising, one-sided rounds, the talk stopped completely. Joppy barely lasted the distance and was as overmatched against Hopkins as Trinidad had been outclassed.

Jermain is the youngest and biggest tiger of them all. Unlike the aforementioned lighter-weight stars, there is almost no tread whatsoever on Taylor's tires. He is also a large, powerful, natural middleweight -- not a small, blown-up welter. But although Jermain has been mostly blowing out opponents, his opponents have been mostly overmatched. It is clear that he is not ready for the champ -- and to fight Hopkins before he is ready could ruin him.

The question is: Will Taylor ever be ready for Hopkins? If the plan was that Jermain's development would coincide with Bernard's deterioration, and he would either meet the champ at the crossroads or else simply wait for the champ's retirement, that plan should be revisited. It also may be wiser to move Jermain to 168. Or else accept the idea that he will eventually ascend to the throne with a loss on his record.

Archie Moore was relentlessly ducked by the light heavyweight champions in his younger fighting days. Archie was finally given a shot at the title when he was 39. He won it and held it for a decade, making 10 defenses, about one a year. He finally landed the big money fights that eluded him when he was a contender. Once the 'ol Mongoose won the title, it was much more difficult to avoid him.

Hopkins won recognition as the one-and-only middleweight champion of the world at age 36. But unlike Moore, since he won the title it has been impossible for him to land a fight. This problem is partly due to Bernard's own difficult personality. For example, his unwillingness to concede a 60-40 split of the purse to Roy Jones resulted in that fight not happening.

At this point, though, the middleweight champ is being ducked by all of his top challengers. De La Hoya, Vargas and Mosley won't even mention his name, and Taylor's braintrust wants no part of the middleweight title if fighting for it means getting in the ring with Hopkins.

Six months to a year ago, Taylor's people might have been thinking, "give the old man another year to 18 months, and then we'll take him." The way Hopkins looked against Joppy, that year-to-18-month timetable has probably been reset. But with Hopkins showing no signs of slowing, it is Taylor who, ironically -- at least at 160 -- might eventually run out of time.

Max Kellerman is a studio analyst for ESPN2's "Friday Night Fights" and the host of the show "Around The Horn."