Josh Taylor: I Knew I Was Gonna Be World Champion; Undisputed Seemed A Bit Far-Fetched

Josh Taylor never envisioned becoming an undisputed world champion when he was a kid.

The Scottish southpaw strongly believed back then he could win one world title, yet not the requisite four belts to fully unify in a division. It isn’t lost on the undefeated Taylor that he exceeded even his own expectations when he out-pointed another undefeated fighter, Jose Ramirez, in his last bout to become boxing’s sixth fully unified champion in any division during the four-belt era.

Taylor (18-0, 13 KOs) already owned the IBF and WBA 140-pound championships when he dropped Ramirez (26-1, 17 KOs) twice and won a 12-round majority decision to take the WBC and WBO belts May 22 at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. The 31-year-old Taylor will defend all four titles for the first time Saturday night, when he’ll box British southpaw Jack Catterall (26-0, 13 KOs) in a 12-round main event at OVO Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland.

“I knew I was gonna be world champion,” Taylor told BoxingScene.com. “But being undisputed champion, because it’s happened to so few fighters, you know, the likelihood of it happening to me was next to none, you know, very unlikely, very highly unlikely. That wasn’t a realistic goal for me at the time, but obviously, once I competed, once I entered the WBSS [World Boxing Super Series], I knew there was real potential that I could.

“If I won that tournament, I’d come up with two belts and The Ring magazine belt. You know, so, I come away with two belts and then it was just a matter of getting the other two. Then it became a real possibility and a realistic dream of mine to become undisputed champion.”

Taylor won his first title, the IBF junior welterweight championship, when he beat Belarus’ Ivan Baranchyk (then 19-0) by unanimous decision in May 2018 at The SSE Hydro, which has been renamed OVO Hydro. He added the WBA super lightweight title by edging New Orleans’ Regis Prograis (then 26-0) in his subsequent bout, a 12-round, majority-decision, five months later at O2 Arena in London.

“To be honest, I always dreamed of being a world champion and becoming a world champion,” Taylor said. “I knew I was gonna be a world champion. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when it was gonna happen. I knew I was gonna be a world champion, but to become undisputed champion, way back in my formative years, when I was writing down on a piece of paper I was gonna be a world champion, I didn’t think I’d be undisputed champion. I thought that was a little bit too far-fetched. But here we are.”

ESPN+ will stream Taylor-Catterall as the main event of a card scheduled to start at 2 p.m. ET and 11 a.m. PT. Sky Sports will televise Taylor-Catterall as the main event of its telecast in the United Kingdom and Ireland (7 p.m. GMT).

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.