ENGINE built for success
Taylor hated his days as a motor mechanic and now he could be driving towards a world title
JOSH TAYLOR was repairing damage with his hands when he realised he would rather be causing destruction with his fists. ‘I have always been interested in engines, so I went to college after school and I started doing an apprenticeship to be a mechanic,’ he recalls.
‘But I just found it really boring. I wanted to get stuck in to the engines and I was going a step back doing all the basic stuff.
‘I thought: “This isn’t for me, standing in a freezing cold garage wearing overalls changing tyres and doing oil changes”.’
A decade on, the Scottish fighter is sitting topless outside a coffee shop, soaking up the south London sunshine and recalling his route to the cusp of a world title.
The self-titled ‘Tartan Tornado’ is more than 330 miles from Prestonpans, the fishing town to the east of Edinburgh where his journey began. But this is the fighter’s home now.
Taylor lives in London, not far from McGuigan’s Gym in Wandsworth where he and coach Shane McGuigan are preparing for the latest challenge of his burgeoning career.
After 12 uninterrupted victories, the 27-year-old announced on Thursday that he would fight former world champion Viktor Postol in Glasgow in June. It is a huge step up for the southpaw,
who has been managed by ex-world flyweight champion Barry McGuigan and promoted by Cyclone Promotions since his professional debut in 2015.
A risk? Certainly. But the rewards are obvious — victory over the experienced Ukrainian would put Taylor first in line for a shot at the WBC world super lightweight title.
It has been a stunning rise for a fighter who did not box until his mid-teens and who counts Superbike riders Valentino Rossi, Steve Hislop and Niall Mackenzie among his childhood heroes.
‘As a kid, I was into motorbikes,’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘I’ve had them since I was about five years old.’
But he has never been a stranger to a scrap.
‘I’ve always been a bit of a fighter since I was a kid, I never caused any trouble or fights in my life but I’ve always been a wee scrapper,’ admits Taylor.
‘I was always the small guy in the playground but I would always find myself in fights. Not through anything bad, just boys being boys. I was always the smaller guy — but I always found a way to win.’
From the age of five, Taylor channeled his fighting spirit through Taekwondo. Despite his history with combat sports, however, it was golf that almost cost him his career — and his life — when he was around ten.
‘I was in the park with my cousin and I was standing behind her, trying to get to hit the ball better,’ he remembers.
‘She cracked me in the face with her golf club, smashing my jaw to pieces. I had to have plastic surgery. It was horrific. The skin was all cracked, you could see my teeth and my bones through the skin — I never got knocked out, though.’
Did that not put him off being hit in the face for a living?
‘No. But I never played golf again. It was safer going to boxing,’ he jokes.
‘I was in hospital for about six weeks. The side of my face had to be reconstructed and I had to be fed through a straw for months.
‘I was eating chicken soup, tomato soup and Cheesy Wotsits for about six months. It wasn’t the best but it was a good experience.’
Luckily, the only lasting damage is a horseshoe-shaped scar on Taylor’s left cheek.
‘The doctors said I was very lucky because the club hit me in the middle of the face,’ he adds. ‘If it had hit me an inch higher, I could have died because it could have hit my temple. And if it had been an inch lower, it could have hit all the nerves and I would have been paralysed.
‘The week after it happened, there was a kid in the next town up — my mum and dad knew his parents — and the same thing happened to him, only the club hit him on the head and he died. I know I was very lucky.’
Taylor has made the most of his escape. He turned to boxing at 15 for a change in training and his idol became Alex Arthur, Scotland’s former world title challenger who trained at Edinburgh’s Meadowbank sports centre. His progress was rapid.
He was narrowly beaten by the Scottish champion in his first contest and earned selection for the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games in India only two years after first lacing up gloves.
He came back with a bronze medal but with an axe to grind after his semi-final was stopped on account of a bleeding nose.
‘I took my headguard off and threw it at the referee,’ he says. ‘I’ve always been a bad loser. Even as a kid, if my mum and dad beat me at Snakes and Ladders, the whole thing would go up in the air. I wanted to win everything.’
It’s a trait that lingers. Bad decisions and bad tempers feature throughout his amateur career and our conversation.
However, two years on from missing out on a medal at London 2012, Taylor’s amateur career reached a crescendo at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
‘It was like I was the poster boy of Scottish boxing,’ he explains. ‘I was going there with the hopes of a nation.’
Five victories later, he was the country’s golden boy.
‘To stand on top of the podium and sing Flower of Scotland in front of 10,000 Scottish people at the Hydro was amazing,’ he says. ‘It’s going to be hard to top that, even as a professional.’
Like Anthony Joshua and Co before him, the medal made Taylor hot property. But there was only one direction he wanted to go in.
His prayers were answered when he received a phone call on the way to the 2014 Boxing Writers’ Club dinner in London, where he won Amateur Boxer of the Year.
He says: ‘It was a withheld number and I don’t usually like answering those because it’s usually my pals or someone doing a prank call or a call centre.
‘I usually leave it thinking: “If they want to speak to me, they’ll leave a message”.
‘But my dad said: “Answer it! You don’t know who it will be”.’
He knew who he wanted it to be. And employing a convincing Northern Irish accent, Taylor reveals: ‘I got up and walked through to the other carriage and (heard): “Hello Josh, it’s Barry McGuigan here”. My jaw dropped and I sat down.’
The former world champion asked to meet Taylor at the dinner to discuss turning professional.
‘I played it cool on the phone, saying: “Yeah, okay, no worries Barry, I’ll see you there”.
‘But I put the phone down and was grinning like a Cheshire cat. That was my mind made up.’
Twelve fights and 12 victories later, it’s a relationship that is flourishing.
In only three years, Taylor has fought in Las Vegas, Texas and New York. He has stopped one former world champion (Miguel Vazquez) and humiliated Ohara Davies.
Beat Postol in June and Taylor knows he is one fight away from finally swapping worn tyres for world titles for good.
I needed plastic surgery after my cousin smashed my jaw with a golf club Josh Taylor v Viktor Postol June 23, SSE Hydro