GLASGOW, Scotland – Josh Taylor raises his right arm to shield his squinting eyes from the piercing Glaswegian sun. The temperature is rising ahead of his return to the ring on Saturday at the Hydro, the scene of some of his most celebrated victories, and the popular if sometimes divisive Scot wants yet more success. Every ounce of his ambition remains and, perhaps most importantly, so too his love of the sport.
This comes after the 34-year-old Taylor, having lost his last two fights, spent portions of yesterday’s final press conference smirking as undercard boxers exchanged jibes, clearly revelling in the light-hearted chaos and banter, enjoying his time back on the main stage and perhaps even thinking about how he, too, once, had big dreams and a mouth to match.
But 48 hours before his fight with Ekow Essuman, perched on a wooden seat on the bank of the River Clyde that dissects Glasgow, he speaks to BoxingScene about his time at the top and his hunger to get back there. He says more than once in our conversation, “I just love boxing.”
He still gets a rush from fight night, of course, but he loves every facet of the sport.
“Absolutely, I love it,” he says. “There’s nothing like it. I’d say, I just love boxing. I love fighting, and I love boxing. And then, the noise of the atmosphere and the crowd, and the noise, and the rollercoaster of emotions, from tomorrow, after the weigh-in, the rollercoaster of emotions, of excitement and nervousness, a little bit scared, but then you’re getting all fired up. It’s just a rollercoaster.
“And then you hear the crowd, and the noise, the atmosphere, and then you get your hand raised at the end. There’s just not a feeling in the world like it. There’s not a feeling in the world like it.
“If you could bottle it up and sell it, you’d be a very rich person.”
Taylor won it all at 140lbs and is the only British champion to hold all four belts at one time. But he is adopting a challenger’s mindset ahead of his fight with Essuman. For what it’s worth, his stacked trophy cabinet at home might as well be empty. Now, at welterweight, he has it all to do again if he is to extend his career at the highest level.
He said at yesterday’s press conference that “I haven’t done nothing yet” speaking of his clean slate at 147lbs.
“That’s what it is, yeah,” he explains. “You know, obviously, I’ve got a bit of name and a bit of depth and a bit of whatever, and pull with my name with what I’ve achieved and done in the sport, but my mentality is, I’ve got to prove it and do it all again. I’m back to being the challenger again, I’m back to making this my division.”
In the wider scheme of things, he feels he has nothing to prove. He checked just about all of the boxes on his rise through the ranks, claiming the World Boxing Super Series crown and bringing together the belts on a tear that included a gruelling 2019 Fight of the Year contender with an inspired Regis Prograis.
While he has something to prove at 147lbs, he doesn’t to himself – and certainly not to the critics.
“Absolutely not. I could retire tomorrow and retire a happy man,” he says.
“I could retire tomorrow and be, like, one in 60 million or whatever population in the UK, the only one to become the undisputed world champion in the four-belt era. I think I can sleep quite easily at night having achieved that. But I know in six months down the line, seven months down the line, I’d be, ‘I could have done more.’ ‘I could have got more.’ ‘I could have got more out of it,’ and that would really bug me.
“I ain’t going to be no Tyson Fury having six and seven comebacks. Once I’m finished, I‘m finished.”
Taylor is engaging and open.
He is relaxed as we talk, and never comes across as distracted or disinterested despite umpteen media obligations and having done it all before.
Taylor has, at times, cut a divisive figure. He can be prickly and outspoken. He can pour fuel on social media fires, so I ask if people know the real Josh Taylor.
He takes a moment to think.
“I don’t know,” he says, the sun still beaming down to the extent that he thinks he might be showing off a T-shirt tan on fight night.
“I don’t think people really do know what I’m like. I’ve had that a few times where I’ve met people, and they’re like, ‘I can’t believe how down-to-earth you are. How calm and down-to-earth you are.’
“I’m like, ‘What do you think I’m like?’
“I don’t know. I don’t really know. I maybe don’t come across sometimes in a good light on social media with some things I post, maybe some political stuff or whatever, or my views about COVID and that kind of stuff.
“Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. I’ve always had, when people meet me, they’re always very pleasantly surprised at how calm and open and welcoming I am to people.”
And while the Taylor in conversation is easy-going, he also has worked behind the scenes – and sacrificed – to make sure his fans have the opportunity to see him live again. It’s been three years since he fought in Scotland. There were heftier paydays further afield that he declined because he didn’t want his fans shelling out to travel every time. He also made sure that young talent he wants to help, like Aston Brown, could get a slot on his undercard.
What is better known is his extreme reverence for the Scottish champions who came before him. Taylor shared a lovely bond with the late Ken Buchanan, who he clearly idolised.
He uses the word “hero” almost before you can finish the final syllable of Buchanan’s name.
In fact, Taylor’s first boxing coach was Ken’s son, Raymond.
“I obviously didn’t know Ken Buchanan or didn’t know boxing at the time,” says Taylor. “I got told about Ken Buchanan and then got given videos of him from Raymond and stuff, and then I thought, ‘Wow, how is this guy not known, really, or spoken about or celebrated? Never mind not known, how is he not celebrated?’ And I just thought, ‘This is the best fighter the UK’s seen. Especially Scotland, anyway. “He’s brilliant. And I just thought it was amazing.”
The more Taylor got into boxing, the more he studied the tartan legend and Hall of Famer who twice defeated Ismael Laguna and beat Carlos Ortiz in a glittering career that stumbled into controversy with a loss to Roberto Duran in 1972 in Madison Square Garden.
There were other ties that bound Buchanan and Taylor, too.
“There are similarities in the way that we both are, the similarities that I’ve had to him in our careers, and even in the roots of the places we’re from… He went with a girl from Prestonpans and stuff and then had Raymond. Raymond obviously trained me at first, and then the way we sort of went out on the road, won the titles out in America, become undisputed, come home, and there was nobody at the airport while coming home.
“Obviously, things were a little bit different because it was due to COVID restrictions and stuff, but coming home and you weren’t allowed to have a parade and that kind of stuff. It’s been quite mad the way we've done it.”
Another Scottish star also served as inspiration at the start of Taylor’s journey, WBO junior lightweight champion Alex Arthur.
Taylor’s mom worked as a receptionist at the Meadowbank Sports Centre, where Arthur was training at the time, and during the school holidays curiosity got the better of Taylor and he went to see what Arthur was doing.
“And I was just like, I’ve never seen this before. This is mad,” Taylor grins. “And I started punching away at the bag and all that. And I think because I’d already become a black belt at taekwondo by then, and I think he [Arthur] maybe saw the technique I was maybe punching the bag, I think he thought that I had boxed before and stuff, and I was like, ‘This is the first time I’ve seen a boxing gym and a punching bag, never mind a boxing ring or a gym.’ He said, ‘You’ve got some technique there, come back tomorrow and train’ and all that. I think I’d done the full Easter holidays with him, training with Alex, and then I found out that there was a boxing gym on a Monday and Wednesday at Meadowbank at my mum’s work. I started going to that, and that's how we got into boxing.”
Perhaps Taylor’s will to fight best matches Scott Harrison, a giant featherweight who never gave any ground in the ring, but had to concede ground to out of the ring demons as his career progressed.
Harrison was fierce, strong, and fearless.
“My dad loved him,” Taylor adds.
“My dad really loved him, because he was just a real hardy, hardy fighter. And his personality, he was just a hard man, so I was always watching Scott Harrison on the telly as well in fights. I just had a lot of good fighters to look up to as role models to try and what to be like. So these three guys were sort of my way of getting into boxing.”
Josh’s dad, Jamie, goes to all of his lad’s fights, but he is always happier when the blood, guts and excitement he might have liked with other fighters are not so obviously displayed when his son boxes.
“I think he maybe likes watching it afterwards,” Taylor says. “I think he’s obviously a little bit nervous before the fight or during the fight. He said to me a couple of times, ‘I don’t like watching my son getting hit, or getting punched,’ ‘But I know you’re a tough fucker, and I know you’re like me,’ because my dad's a bit of a tough guy as well.
“And he says, ‘I know what you’re like, so I'm calm, but I don’t like watching it.’
“He says, ‘After it, I’ll watch your fight a hundred times.’ And he does that all the time, he does do that.”
On Saturday, his dad will be watching on, and if Taylor has his way with Essuman, there will be more fights, more blood and guts, and more violence.
Taylor has spoken of his willingness to rematch Teofimo Lopez, the first man to beat him, of wanting to chase down Terence Crawford, and being open to a future fight with Conor Benn. There is always talk of a third fight with Jack Catterall, with whom he shares a win apiece in their two-fight rivalry.
“Listen, at this stage, if it’s right for me at the time, why not? I’m not really too fussed about the Catterall third one. If they want to do it, they want to do it. But they’re going to have to pay me for it. I feel the second one, I think they just gave him the second fight on a sympathy vote, really, because I felt the second fight I won, no questions asked.
“And the judge in the scoring, 117-111, I thought, ‘Jesus, that was a bit wide.’ And they were going on about the first one being a wide score [in Taylor’s favor]. I just thought, ‘Nah.’
“We’ll see what happens. If they pay me right, I’ll fight them, no problem.”
It was defeat to Catterall that, a year on from Lopez, meant Taylor had lost two fights in a row. The fight before Lopez was the controversial win over Catterall. With those performances in mind, Taylor is aware that – in some quarters – he is being written off and condemned as yesterday’s man.
“It wasn’t a bad showing, no,” he says of the Catterall return. “But I got a bad result, didn’t I? I was on the wrong end of a decision. So I got that, and then on top of the Teofimo fight where I was impaired going in [he had a foot injury that played havoc with his preparation]… So I think that’s the two reasons why they think I finished.”
Now, however, with Taylor relaxing on a riverbank, basking in the rare Scottish sun, he can joke about now having “a non-existent weight cut.”
It had not been like that at 140lbs for some time.
“It was bad,” he explains.
“All I would be thinking about was how many ounces is in that water [that this author is chugging], how much can I sip? How much can I take in so I don't have to do too much sweating out tonight or too much running around and skipping around in the gym sweating it out? You know, that's just non-existent now. So, yeah, [it’s] easy.”
What is not so easy for Taylor is to imagine a life after boxing.
“I’ve never thought about it yet,” he says. Shocked, I ask again, and the same reply comes. “Really?”
“I’ve never thought about it yet. I mean, I’ve started thinking about having family and kids with Danielle [his wife and partner of 15 years], where we want to start having kids and things like that, you know, so... Yeah, I want to start having kids and things like that.”
He will not try to stop his kids from boxing, should the time come. He will even help them, to boost their self-respect, self-confidence. He wants them to know how to look after themselves, too.
Then, giving it some more thought, he adds: “If it turned out one of my kids wanted to box and it was what they genuinely wanted to do, I’d get at the back of them and support them and make sure they’d done everything properly and make sure that everything was good, you know?”
And just like that, Scotland could have another world beater.
As much confidence as Taylor has in himself, and as many trophies and championships as he’s accumulated – amateur and pro – not even he foresaw what he has gone on to achieve. He could dream, but he never dreamt this big.
“Not at the very start, no,” he admits. “I always knew I was destined to be world champion at something, but I just didn’t know what at the time. Then I found boxing. Then I found out about a year or two, three years later, I thought, ‘I’m pretty good at this. I’m going to go as far as I can with this.’ Then I started going to international tournaments, coming back with gold medals and Best Boxer of the Tournaments.
“I’d only been boxing for two and a half years and I went to the Commonwealth Youth Games in 2008, came back with a bronze. Then two years later, I went to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and came back with a silver, losing to Tom Stalker in the final.
“And then went to the Commonwealth Games, qualified for the Olympics, was the first Scotsman to do in, I don’t know, 30-odd years I think it was. Beat the world champion, world number one in the first round and then lost out narrowly to the former world champion in the second round. And then went to the Commonwealth Games and won the gold.
“And it was just like, ‘I’m going to take this as far as I can go. I’m going to be a world champion.’ But I didn’t think I would quite be able to manage what I’ve accomplished.”
That is Taylor to a tee. Despite the success, there is still a hunger. Taylor is still a fighting man, but he is one clearly at peace with himself – despite the perceived prickly disposition. With that in mind, when the bell goes on Saturday, and he is faced with the next chapter of his already storied career, Taylor will stand and fight.
Some think Essuman can win at the Hydro. Taylor is not one of them, but he admits that Essuman has the potential to take him into a darkness that, despite his wealth and fame, he is not afraid to enter. In fact, it is one Taylor reckons he will relish.
“Mentally I’m prepared for that kind of fight, you know,” he admits, not long before he returns to his hotel room to nap. “I always mentally prepare for being the toughest fight that I think it’s going to be. And I think it can be at times. It will be that kind of fight. It will be that kind of tear-up fight.”