Champs collide
Columnist Mark Whicker says Taylor vs. Ramirez will be the first big post-pandemic fight.
There were 17 fights on the card at Don Haskins Center in El Paso. Josh Taylor performed in the second one, many hours and beers before Julio Cesar Chavez’s main event.
The dozens who were marking time saw Taylor knock out Archie Weah in two rounds. Few knew that greatness was among them. The only tipoff was the presence of Nacho Beristain, Mexico’s most famous trainer, who somehow wound up with Taylor that night.
“You will be a champion someday,” he told Taylor.
You might reply, “Won’t everyone?”
That was in July of 2015. Taylor has fought only 16 times since. He has been climbing those stairs two at a time. It took only a few more fights before everyone was seconding Beristain, and it happened officially in 2019, when Taylor won unanimously over Ivan Baranchyk and took the IBF belt.
“Not bad for a kid from The Pans,” Taylor tweeted that night. He’s from Prestopans, Scotland, a village east of Edinburgh, where he ditched tae kwon do when he was 15 and took up the gloves.
Some boxers are satisfied with one title. The best can see beyond the baubles and jewels. They know how slim a strand of leather it is.
That man knows it’s a dilution and a delusion, that his ideal is to take all the prisoners, fill the whole closet with belts. When someone sees him in a room and says, “Hey, champ,” he doesn’t want any other heads turning.
That is why Saturday night is the first really special night in post-pandemic boxing.
At The Virgins Hotel in
Las Vegas, Taylor meets Jose Ramirez for the WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF championships in the super-lightweight division.
Taylor has two and so does Ramirez. Does it really matter who has which? The man who leaves the ring will be the supreme 140-pound fighter, not just in the public mind but on the official record.
Boxing has trouble sometimes with definitions. Whenever one champ meets another, the fight is often billed as a “unification.” What they mean is “half-ification.”
The only boxer who has all four belts in his division is lightweight Teofimo Lopez. Canelo Alvarez can sweep 168-pound honors if and when he defeats Caleb Plant, and Anthony Joshua can become the world’s supreme heavyweight if he takes care of Tyson Fury, which is supposed to happen in Saudi Arabia on August 14.
Ken Buchanan was the only lightweight champ for a while in the early 70s, when there was only the WBA and WBC. Taylor is the toughest Scot since then. He’s a 5-foot-10 lefty with enormous toughness and technique.
He won over the remaining agnostics in 2019 when his right eye was a mushroom omelet and he still persevered through 12 rounds and won a split decision over Regis Prograis. That concluded the 140-pound Super Series, which didn’t involve Ramirez.
“He was a shorter, stockier guy but I was still able to score from the inside,” Taylor said. “I thought he won the first couple rounds and then I won the next three, and after that I think I could have dominated if my eye hadn’t closed up.
“I think Prograis has a better boxing IQ than Ramirez does. Ramirez is a very good fighter who has pretty much the same strategy all the time. He comes at you, wants to put the pressure on. I think it’s a good style for me.”
Ramirez, 26-0, will bring a two-and-a-half-inch reach advantage, and has been far more explosive since Robert Garcia became his trainer. Both men won difficult decisions over former champ Viktor Postol. Ramirez took out Maurice Hooker, who had one of the 140-pound belts, in six rounds. There is little else to differentiate them. One can easily foresee this as Chapter One of a binge-worthy series.
Ramirez is a legitimate hero to the field workers in the Central Valley and a spokesman for water rights and new immigration policies. Taylor helps distribute chicken dinners in his East Lothian area and is part of the Knives Down Gloves Up initiative, which tries to reduce street violence by moving kids into boxing programs.
He and girlfriend Danielle Murphy are getting married afterward. “It’s no distraction,” he said, smiling. “She’s handling all that.”
He also might do the ringwalk to the tune of “Yes Sir I Can Boogie,” the disco number by Bacarra that has become the theme of the Scottish national soccer team and was revived by The Fratellis, who provided “Chelsea Dagger” and watched it become the goal-celebrator of the Chicago Blackhawks.
“I haven’t decided,” Taylor said. “It could still be something with bagpipes.”