For Josh Taylor, the pain registers more than the glory.
This week, having been forced to retire from boxing at the age of 34 with damage to his left eye, Taylor has been inundated with online positivity despite knowing he’s cut an, at times, divisive figure.
But Taylor leaves having won it all.
The 19-3 (13 KOs) Scot has claimed the World Boxing Super Series, the IBF title, the WBA’s, the WBC’s and the WBO’s crowns as well as The Ring strap.
He raced to 19-0, unifying everything with a string of victories that vaulted him into many pound-for-pound lists, reeling off wins over Viktor Postol, Ryan Martin, Ivan Baranchyk, Regis Prograis and Jose Ramirez when the Prestonpans man was on fire.
A decorated amateur, he was living the dream, but frustratingly for Taylor arguably his greatest triumph came during the pandemic.
More on that later.
After losing his third consecutive bout, to Ekow Essuman, in May, Taylor planned to take a couple of weeks out and return to training.
Fate, however, intervened, and recent tests to his eyes revealed multiple tears and his future was based on his health and not his desire to fight again. Because given the choice, he would have walked to the ring at least a couple more times.
While he’s been humbled by the thousands of messages he has received, he knows this is not how he wanted to bow out.
“It’s been a bit of a bittersweet, you know,” sighed the 34-year-old. “It’s been very very heart-warming and kind of cheered me up a little bit with the response that I’ve had, my phone has just went crazy since I announced it on Monday and I’ve still got literally maybe over a thousand messages to get through, so I will get back to everybody in due time. But it’s just been kind of overwhelming the reaction that I’ve had, so that’s cheered me up a little bit. Knowing that folk and the fans and stuff appreciated my time in the sport and appreciated what I gave to the sport. It’s been very nice and very comforting.”
But, with the news still fresh, and Taylor’s fighting heart hurting, the hardest part is the acceptance that the dream he’s been living for more than 20 years of his life has run its course.
“It’s been two weeks of processing it and coming to terms with it, that it's the end of the road; it's been a couple of hard couple of weeks,” he told BoxingScene.
“I only took two weeks off after the Ekow fight and I was straight back into the gym and training away and keeping fit and I was in good shape and then I went down to Liverpool for basically a check-up on my eyes to see how they were because I was expecting to go under another sort of squint surgery with alignment in the eyes, but when they took the picture of the eyes and stuff, they found a couple of tears in the retinal tissue so I ended up having to get laser eye treatment and the tears were quite significant and I was a bit like, ‘Well, I’ve not got many options.’ Do I get it done and then carry on and then potentially lose my sight? I said, ‘Nah, I'm not willing to do that.’ So I’ve achieved what I have in the sport, I’ve climbed the top of the mountain, I’ve been there and done it and wore the t-shirt, but it’s now time to sit and reflect on what's been a great career. It’s been a tough couple of weeks, to be honest. It’s been quite emotional, to be fair, it’s been kind of all of a sudden. It’s been quite a hard process to try and go through it and keep my head. So it’s quite raw, I’m quite emotional at the minute.”
Taylor admits he’s shared tears a few times, wrestling with the information.
He was told that if he took one wrong blow, he could lose his vision in the bad eye.
Boxing has been his life for more than two decades. While he knew he was near the end of his decorated career, he always thought he’d go out on his terms and, ultimately, it would be his decision.
His final fight was, fittingly, in Glasgow. But he was so disappointed with the loss and frustrated at how he fought, leaving the ring without a message to his fans at the Hydra.
Nothing about his exit was how he would have written it.
“I was only going to have maybe one or two more fights anyway, but to get this news now, especially on the run, my last couple of fights, I wanted to go out on a win,” he explained. “I wanted to go on a win, my last couple of fights was…”
He stops momentarily to consider the losses to Teofimo Lopez, Jack Catterall and Essuman.
“I performed okay against Ekow, but it wasn’t my best, nowhere near my best and no disrespect to him, because I really like Ekow and I’ve got a lot of time for him, but at my best guys like Ekow don’t get near me, with all due respect. But on the night he was better than me and that’s it. You can’t cry over spilled milk, but I just know at my best I can beat anyone. I just haven’t been my best lately.”
Taylor’s career was stalled by the pandemic, and then by recurring injuries meaning he fought once a year for the final six years of his career.
He’s had foot injuries, eye injuries; he’s stopped and started.
Now he’s been told that one more big hit in the eye and the lights could go out forever.
“It was so fucking horrible to hear, but I had my mind made up then. I said, ‘Well, I ain’t risking losing my sight. I’ve got a lot of life left to live after boxing, kids and family and doing all the things that I want to do and all the activities that I’m interested in and stuff as well… Motorbike racing and things like that, and just spending time with my family, quality time with my family – and it’s going to be tough to do that if I went blind in one eye. I would be angry, bitter and I’d be disappointed. I had to take into account what life’s going to be like after boxing. I just decided to look after my health.”
Taylor doesn’t envisage leaving the sport behind. Far from it, he wants to remain involved. Processing the news is a priority, but he has plans to help in his gym.
And for all of his dominance at the time at junior welterweight, arguably his biggest night – defeating Jose Ramirez in Las Vegas – was not what he had hoped for.
It came during the pandemic, in essence behind closed doors, and his closest family couldn’t be there, let alone the legions of Scots who would have travelled.
“Only myself and my team could go over, so there were only 10 of us that went over to America,” he recalled. “My mum, my dad, my wife, my little sister, my family, my friends couldn’t come with me to witness history being made, so that was a very bittersweet moment in my career. I had dreamed all my life to obviously go over to America and win titles and stuff and you go and you dream of taking travelling fans and then you land a fight to win not only one world title but all the world titles and nobody can go there.”
For years, Taylor had been told by his supporters. “Have a big one in America, we will be there.”
It, ultimately, was not what he hoped it would be.
Even having the belts at home now, you sense the occasion is tainted.
“But,” he added, “at the end of the day, I achieved my lifetime goal of becoming an undisputed world champion and I never thought I would ever do something like that, and I’ve done it overseas, abroad with only 10 of us there, basically by ourselves. It was like us against the world, and we’ve done it.”
Then, however, he had to go home and quarantine. There was no greeting at the airport, no homecoming parade and not even a few drinks with his friends.
“I had achieved my lifetime goal but it was shit, I couldn’t get it celebrated afterwards,” he lamented.
The victory over Prograis, in an absolute war in London’s O2 Arena, was “probably” his best night. Friends and family travelled en masse south of the border.
“All the mad Scots took over London and we had a really good shindig after it and stuff,” Taylor smiled. “That was a great one.”
But it was a damaging fight and triggered the problems Taylor started to have with his eyes.
There was an occasion, eating dinner, when he looked down at his plate but saw two plates. He tilted his head to try to correct what he was seeing, but he knew something was wrong.
Even heading into the Ramirez fight, he admitted he had “wonky vision” and he had his first eye surgery after that. Two more have followed.
It had been all the way back during his run to Commonwealth gold in the amateurs when he started to believe he could win a world title as a pro. Then, having reached the top and unified, his father asked him to consider retirement having earned a full set of titles.
“That’s my mission accomplished,” he reflected. “I’ve won it all. I’ve won everything, and my dad was saying to me, ‘Just retire now, son, you retire at the top.’ I was like, ‘Absolutely, but you know, I can be at the top, but I haven't had top money. I need money to live the rest of my life, man.’ So I continued. But I also believed I was going to go on and become a world champion again; become a two-weight world champion. Then injuries started happening left, right and center, and I started getting plagued with injuries, so it was a bit of a shitty end to my career. It was a bit of a nosedive, kind of riddled with injuries the last three or four years.”
The Essuman bout wound up being his last. Josh left the ring annoyed by how he’d fought, and frustrated that he’d been lured out of his gameplan. For the first half, he was looking sharp up at welterweight, feeling strong and nimble.
But he stopped concentrating on what had worked early on and was sucked into trying to match “The Engine” in the departments of his opponent’s strength.
Soon, Taylor could not find his groove again.
It was to be his final act as a professional fighter, but the risk of losing his sight has taken all of his future fighting decisions out of his hands
“I’m not playing lottery with something as precious as my sight, so it’s been a tough couple of weeks, I’ll say that,” he said. “It’s been a tough couple of weeks coming to terms where that’s the end of it all of a sudden, like basically the door’s been slammed. My health is my wealth. I’ve completed the game in a sense. I’ve won every world title. I’ve earned okay money. I’ve earned good money. So what else am I fighting for? I’ve got a whole lot of life left to live after boxing, although I didn’t think that when I heard this news two weeks ago. My whole world caved in, so I’m still adjusting to it and I’m still upset about it.”
Taylor adored Scottish great Ken Buchanan and they became friends. He looked up to fellow Scots Alex Arthur and Scott Harrison, too, and the gifted southpaw who started boxing all those years ago admits what he’s done was beyond that child’s wildest dreams.
“I’d think you were mental [if you told him as a kid he would win it all],” Taylor laughed. “But I’ve done it. It’s a lot of hard work, perseverance and self-belief. I would never be thinking I’d be sitting here and talking to you, achieving what I’ve achieved. I always believed I would become world champion, but what I went on to achieve, I never thought I would be able to do that. And that’s thanks to everyone that I mentioned [in his retirement statement], who have been involved in my career and my development.”
Taylor and wife Danielle have been together for 15 years, and now it is time to start a family. It is also time to enjoy the fruits of his labor and breathe in that rarefied air that only those who have won the lot are able to do.
