Most boxers spend an entire career looking to prove people wrong.
Josh Taylor enters every fight looking to prove at least one person right.
With every win, the unbeaten and unified junior welterweight titlist advances among the greatest boxers ever to come out of Scotland. That honor currently belongs to Hall of Fame legend Ken Buchanan (61-8, 27KOs), the only Scottish boxer ever to lay claim to an undisputed championship.
Taylor first met Buchanan as a teenager, training under Raymond Fraser Buchanan who is the son of the former lightweight champion. The meeting took on new meaning only after Taylor became familiar with his accomplishments, admittedly having not grown up with boxing in his life and only getting to know him once working with his son.
“He used to come in when I was a young whipper snapper, watching me hit the heavy bags and giving me advice on how to punch, how he lived and how he trained,” Taylor recalled during the first installment of the Blood, Sweat and Tears: Ramirez vs. Taylor two-part series on ESPN2 ahead of his May 22 undisputed championship showdown with WBC/WBO titlist Jose Ramirez (26-0, 17KOs). “He told me I’d be world champion someday. I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since.”
Taylor (17-0, 13KOs) lived up to those expectations relatively quickly into his pro career. A member of the 2012 Great Britain boxing team that competed in the London Olympics, the Scottish southpaw claimed his first major title by his 15th pro fight after outpointing unbeaten Ivan Baranchyk in their May 2019 IBF junior welterweight title fight.
Five months later, Taylor emerged as the class of the division following a 12-round majority decision over Regis Prograis to unify the IBF and WBA titles. The win also netted him top honors in the World Boxing Super Series junior welterweight tournament.
“I had no nerves going into the fight,” Taylor recalled of his career-defining win (to date) over Prograis. “When I won the titles from Prograis, Kenny came down. I showed him my belts, and he said, ‘I’m glad you proved me right.’”
Taylor has fought just one round of action since then. It came last September 26, when he wiped out Thailand’s Apinun Khongsong in the 1st round of his unified title defense. The event came on the 50th anniversary of Buchanan’s first title win, when he traveled to Puerto Rico to dethrone WBA lightweight champion Ismael Laguna in 1970. Buchanan added the WBC belt to his collection just two fights following a 15-round decision victory over Ruben Navarro, becoming the first Scot—and for now, the only—to claim undisputed champion status in the multi-belt era.
Adding to that legacy has always been a focal point to Taylor—grabbing a belt merely serving as the first step towards owning all of the relevant hardware.
“I always knew I was going to be world champion,” insists Taylor. “When I done it, it was mission accomplished. That was one [box] ticked off, there are levels to becoming undisputed champion.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
