Taylor Stops Edouard in Third

Middleweight Jermain Taylor added to his undefeated record and kept alive hopes for a possible showdown with undisputed champion Bernard Hopkins with a third-round knockout of Daniel Edouard in an undercard bout Saturday night at Staples Center.

Taylor, a 2000 U.S. Olympic bronze medalist, dominated Edouard, of Haiti, from the start and ended the fight with a series of hard left and right hooks to improve to 23-0 with 17 knockouts.

“This was exactly the kind of performance I wanted,” Taylor said. “I think I answered a lot of questions. He was a great fighter and came to fight. I just put him away early.”

The loss was Edouard’s first as a professional as he dropped to 16-1-2.

“I am very disappointed,” Edouard said. “He caught me with a good shot, but I felt I could have continued. I knew he was tough. ... He stopped me, but he didn’t show me anything that I hadn’t seen before.”

Taylor connected on 55% of his punches, including 39 of 68 power shots.

“I felt like this was an audition and I could feel the pressure” for a potential Hopkins fight, Taylor said. “But he is the champion and calls the shots. I am willing to fight anyone. It makes me nervous when they say I am the heir apparent. He is not my king. Being a prince is OK, but I want to be the king.”

In other fights: Junior-welterweight Demetrius Hopkins, Bernard’s nephew from Philadelphia, extended his record to 17-0-1 with an eight-round unanimous decision over Mexico’s Francisco Javier Garcia. U.S. Olympian Vicente Escobedo of Woodland, Calif., won his pro debut with a second-round knockout of junior-lightweight Abraham Verdugo of Tucson; and Olympian Abner Mares of Los Angeles, a super-bantamweight, improved to 2-0 with a fifth-round technical-knockout victory over Mexico’s Francisco Soto. In a super-lightweight bout, Junior Witter of England won a 12-round decision over Lovemore N’Dou of South Africa.