Jack Catterall is a huge underdog when he takes on Josh Taylor for all the junior welterweight marbles in Scotland this weekend, but don’t try telling him or his team that.
Confidence is surging through team Catterall, and Jack, Taylor’s long-term mandatory challenger who stepped aside to allow Taylor to fight Jose Ramirez in a unification fight last year, has had plenty of time to prepare.
“He’s been sat on his shot for a world title for a couple of years, definitely,” said Catterall’s trainer, Jamie Moore. “This particular fight… we sort of knew Josh was probably going to beat Ramirez but it was never going to be a certainty and it was only cemented a few months ago. [But] We’ve had plenty of time to prepare as it’s the fight we’ve been looking at and that’s a good thing from our point of view. I think it’s virtually impossible for Taylor to have had the sort of preparation we’ve had because we’ve had more foresight and anticipation for the fight and his focus has been elsewhere. Those little differences and small percentages make a big difference in a fight like this and it’s a big task but nobody knows what Jack Catterall is capable of because he’s never been put into these sort of waters. From what I’ve seen, from a talent point of view and the people he’s sparred [including Floyd Mayweather and Canelo Alvarez], the better he’s in with the better he performs, so if that’s the case and he can bring it out on Saturday then it’s going to be a special fight.”
For Taylor, this is a homecoming. It’s his first fight in front of his own fans since a 2019 win over Ivan Baranchyk and Catterall is on enemy territory. It is something him and his team have spent time discussing it, so they will be ready for the hostile reception they are bound to receive.
“Of course,” agreed Moore. “Those are the sort of things you talk about as you get nearer the fight. We talked about it early on but there’s no point getting him mentally prepared for it eight or six weeks away because you’ll overthink it and burn yourself out but the closer it gets now, I’ve just started dropping little words in there, talking about a ‘hostile atmosphere’ and how he’s got to keep a ‘cool head’ and making him understand what Taylor’s going to try and do in terms of riling him up and trying to bring him to his level of angriness and aggressiveness. He [Taylor] knows that would be Jack’s downfall, if he tried to match Taylor for aggression and output. That’s not Jack Catterall. My focus for Jack has been, as good as Josh Taylor is, let Josh Taylor come and beat you. Don’t try to go and beat him at his own game, let him try to beat you at your game.”
Catterall said this week that Taylor has not been able to read him. He’s given little away in their head to heads, on TV and at press conferences, and Moore says Catterall has one of the best poker faces in the sport.
“It’s not even intentional, he’s so laid back,” the coach explained. “I’ve never seen him riled up and I’ve never seen him angry. I’ve seen the switch go when he’s sparring, so he’s got a real nasty streak about him, but he’s still got a cool, calm and collected way. He’s just got that spitefulness about him.”
Yet so does Taylor. He can be surly and he’s not short on spitefulness or aggression himself, but Moore and his team are ready for that. They are ready from the hostile reception they will get inside as well as outside the ring but he thinks his man will dictate terms with what he does in the fight.
“Taylor’s at home, by nature he’s an aggressive person and if Jack controls the tempo, which he does very well and a lot of his opponents in sparring can’t really work out how he does it, he just mesmerizes you,” Moore continued. “I’ve compared him to the snake from The Jungle Book, where he sort of hypnotizes you and gets you under his spell. I think Taylor will get to the point where he says, ‘F--- this, I’m not having Jack Catterall in my backyard dictating the tempo of the fight,’ and [he will] jump down his throat. That’s when I think he’ll play in to his hands.”
If Catterall manages to do that, he will bag one of the year’s biggest upsets and all of the belts at 140lbs. And Moore has no doubt that Catterall did the right thing stepping aside to let Taylor fight Ramirez because it’s made this fight in Scotland bigger.
“Absolutely,” Moore concluded. “Jack has waited a long time for this and he deserves his opportunity and I feel he’s done the right thing, not only for himself but for boxing in the sense it’s always better to have a unified, No. 1 fighter in a division. It’s better for boxing as a whole, so he did the right thing in that regard but also personally he’s got a bigger opportunity now as well.”
