The rare career of Josh Taylor showed the privileged burden that boxing can bring

Independent

20 hours ago

It is not going to be easy for Josh Taylor to walk off into the boxing sunset after a remarkable career inside the ropes.
It was also a brutally short career, a rare career in British boxing; it was unusual because of the speed, the relentless hard matchmaking and the success.
Taylor, who is now 34, is the only British boxer to have held all four of the accepted and respected belts in the modern era of a sport packed with division and false claims.
In a business where men – it is different for the women – often have 20 or more fights before finally getting a chance at a world title, Taylor held a version of the world title after just 15 fights. He had been a professional for less than four years at that time.
In British boxing history, the world champions have been seasoned by years of learning their trade and being used as part of a bargaining system by promoters and managers. Taylor broke with tradition, altered the expected path of boxers and in just his 18th fight, he held all four of the belts. He was Josh Taylor, undisputed champion.
World champions like John Conteh in the Seventies, Alan Minter in the Eighties, and Lennox Lewis in the Nineties served typically extended apprenticeships, featuring for long spells on undercards and waiting for an opening, waiting for a chance.
Conteh won his world title in his 27th fight, Minter his 43rd fight, and Lewis in his just his 23rd. Lewis had the benefit of two Olympics as experience, including the gold in Seoul, but still danced slowly down the well-trodden and careful path. It was a path that Taylor seemed to reject; he was ready to be fast-tracked by the time he became a professional boxer.
Taylor had two Commonwealth Games medals and had been to the Olympics in 2012 when he finally turned professional in 2015. He had stayed after the London Olympics to compete and win a gold at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. He was the unofficial mascot for the Games, used in adverts, and his face was plastered all over Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was a privileged burden and one he comfortably repaid.
He had hard fights early on, winning the Commonwealth professional title in just his seventh fight when he stopped Dave Ryan, a noted hard man, in the fifth round in front of a devoted flock in Edinburgh. The real fights were getting closer for Taylor.
The bigger wins followed: unbeaten Ohara Davies ruined in seven in 2017, former world champion Viktor Postol given a boxing lesson in 2018, and the unbeaten and dangerous Ryan Martin stopped in seven. All three fights were in Glasgow; Scotland had a boxing hero. Postol had just lost to the great Terrence Crawford – Taylor possibly did a better job. This was not a hype gravy train.
In 2019, also in Glasgow, Taylor met the IBF light-welterweight champion, Ivan Baranchyk, who was 19-0 with 12 knockouts; Taylor won on points, he had his first world title, but the boxing world was about to shrink.
The run continued, the darkness of Covid was coming. Taylor fought six unbeaten men in a stunning consecutive sequence, including five in world title fights; he unified the titles, fighting in front of a sold-out O2 in London when he beat the fancied Regis Prograis in late 2019. Prograis was the WBA champion. It was a stunning fight, contender for Fight of the Year.
Prograis was shell-shocked at the end – it should have been the fight that transformed Taylor, made him a star, but his next fight was nearly a year later and behind closed doors at York Hall in front of less than 50 people; Covid hit hard and few in boxing suffered more from the fallout than Taylor. It robbed him of momentum and a chance to win all four belts in front of an outdoor crowd in Scotland. That is the harsh reality.
Taylor travelled under too many radars during this exceptional sequence because of the Covid restrictions. It was a cruel twist, a twist as cruel as the eye injury that forced him after just 23 fights to walk away last week.
'I have certainly not had the best of luck,' he said, and he is right.
He won his first world title in May of 2019 and lost the last of the four belts he owned in June of 2023; he fought just four times in the middle during a four-year spell when, under different circumstances, he could have become a major star.
In 2021, he went to Las Vegas to fight Jose Ramirez; all four of the recognised belts and the Ring magazine belt were on the line; Ramirez was unbeaten in 26, but he was dropped twice and lost. Taylor had become the undisputed world champion in just his 18th fight. There were just a hundred or so in the Virgin complex on the night to witness history.
None of Taylor's family and friends could be there.
The bad nights followed, including last year, when Jack Catterall avenged a heavily debated loss to Taylor from 2022. In May of this year, he lost for the third consecutive time when he was narrowly beaten by Ekow Essuman. The eye injury was there; the end was near.
Taylor will not make an easy traveller, but he will go off into the horizon with a spectacular legacy. The first and only undisputed British world champion in modern boxing. That is, trust me, enough.