Josh Taylor did not always care for the daily grind of training nor for the discomfort of trying to cut weight. Taking repeat blows to the head and body in sparring and on fight night wasn’t a huge lot of fun either.
And yet, there was something about the familiarity of that regimented lifestyle that proved comforting. Taylor was either in camp preparing for a bout or staying ready for the next one. Now, after almost 20 years in boxing as an amateur and then as a professional, that reassuring sense of repetition has been taken from him now that the former undisputed world champion has been ushered into retirement due to growing concerns over his vision.
It has left Taylor feeling empty and uncertain, like a prisoner released back into the world after serving a life sentence. He has his freedom back to do as he pleases but it quickly becomes clear that the 34-year-old hasn’t really considered what life after boxing might be like for him. Given his age and the struggles of the last few years in the ring that comes as a bit of a surprise, although Taylor isn’t the first athlete to find it tough to even contemplate moving on from the thing that so clearly defined them for so long.
The day after we speak, Taylor is in Glasgow at the press conference to launch Nathaniel Collins’ next fight, a European featherweight bout against Cristobal Lorente. Taylor is there on behalf of promoters Queensberry, doing interviews for their in-house TV channel and posing for pictures alongside the two headliners. He looks in his element, just as he does moments later as he stands chatting and joking off-camera with the fighters from the top table.
Taylor’s presence had prompted host Dev Sahni to open the gathering by paying a glowing, heartfelt tribute to the Scot. Taylor looked visibly moved although, for someone still coming to terms with retirement, having his greatest achievements recounted must also have felt a bit like listening to his obituary. So, how is he finding life as an ex-boxer?
“Pretty sh**, to be fair,” Taylor tells me with typical candour. “I’m still coming to terms with the fact I’m not going to be boxing again, having the highs and the adrenaline buzz to chase and something to look forward to. So, I’m in limbo at the minute. I’ve just been on a bit of a downer since [the announcement]. But I’ve got to pull myself together and f****** get on with it, really.
“It’s just figuring out what I want to do. I hadn’t thought about anything [after boxing] as I was expecting to go on for another two or three years. And now I’m not. I don’t miss the hard days in the gym. I’m not missing the, ‘oh f**k, I’ve got this circuit today’. Or when you’re feeling sore and knackered and you’ve got young, fresh guys coming in trying to make a point of sparring well against you. I won’t miss that, that’s for sure. But I will miss the buzz of chasing fights and the big nights.”
Boxers don’t always listen to medical advice but the seriousness of the warning – and the very real prospect of going blind – was enough for Taylor to agree, reluctantly, that there was no value in carrying on.
“I wanted to continue but I was told that one more big blow and I could have probably lost the vision in my left eye. They took pictures of the eyes and found six tears in my retinal tissue.
“My vision is fine and I maybe could have continued but it was a big risk. If I hadn’t become world champion and achieved what I did, I probably would have continued. It would be different if it was my back or my leg or something. But when it’s your eyesight, then once that goes, it goes. I don’t think I’d be able to cope if I lost my sight.”
It is the only rational outcome for Taylor who can now get on with the rest of his life having come through 22 professional fights without any other obvious significant physical damage.
It is just what he does next that he’s unsure about. Returning to Lochend Boxing Club to work with former mentor Terry McCormack and his young charges seems an obvious angle, while he should also pick up more television work as a boxing pundit. Less than a month since announcing he was hanging up the gloves, however, he is still far too raw to properly formulate a new career plan.
“I don’t know what I want to do, where I want to go or the things I want to do,” he admits. “I’ve been pretty sensible with the money I’ve earned. I’ve made it work for me and put it to work for me. I’ve put it in pensions and property and things like that.
“So, I’ll be okay but I need to figure out what I want to do and get another purpose in life now. I probably will go down the road of going back to Lochend and training some of the lads because I really enjoy helping the younger boys and girls in the gym. I’ll probably do that once the emotions calm down a little bit.”
Taylor’s true passion in life, in fact, has never been boxing but motorcycle racing having grown up watching his dad zooming around Knockhill and racing motocross himself before he was even out of primary school. It is something he is keen to explore more, buying himself a Yamaha “wee track toy”, but can’t see it becoming a second career.
“I’m going to start doing track days and stuff like that,” he reveals. “But when you get into racing competitively, it costs an absolute fortune unless you’ve got someone who’s willing to back you financially.
“I don’t think I’ll be getting to ride in the British Superbike paddock unless someone comes along and says, ‘we’re going to take a punt on you and give you a chance’. But you never know.
“Before the boxing took off I went to a mechanics course at college but it was just changing tyres and doing oil changes. And it was so boring so I stopped. I was like, ‘I’m not going to be doing this, wearing overalls in a freezing cold garage in the winter doing bloody oil changes’. I could do that with my eyes shut. I wasn’t going to do that for the rest of my life.
“Then I went into college doing sport and fitness. I got quite good at it but fell way behind on the coursework because I was going away boxing internationally with Scotland all over the place.
“Boxing had started taking off for me and I was winning gold medals everywhere I went. So, I decided I was going to take that as far as I could. And it turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made.”
That’s quite the understatement. Taylor’s career highlights have been widely documented in the many tributes paid to him since retiring, most notably becoming the only British male to be crowned undisputed world champion in the four-belt era.
There are some regrets, too, however. Defeating Jose Ramirez in Las Vegas in 2021 to sweep the division ought to have brought him unalloyed joy but the fact it took place in a near-empty arena due to Covid restrictions, with none of the major UK broadcasters picking it up, still gnaws away at him.
“Yeah, that p****ed me off,” he admits. “I’ve achieved something that no one else has achieved in the sport in the UK. And it wasn’t even covered by a UK broadcaster.
“My family and friends couldn’t come and witness it either. There were only 10 of us, two of whom were my mates who were training alongside me. The rest were my boxing coaches, my nutritionist, my S&C [strength and conditioning] coach and my sparring partners. It was us against the rest of the world in a way.
“I had thousands of fans telling me beforehand, ‘when you go to America we’re coming with you’ and they couldn’t be there. We created history so that will always live with me but it will always be a little bit tainted as well.”
Not moving up to welterweight sooner is another source of frustration in hindsight, although Taylor felt he had no choice but to stand by a gentleman’s agreement to fight Jack Catterall after the Englishman had stood aside to let Taylor take on Ramirez for all the marbles.
“I made a deal with Catterall that if I won that fight I would give him first crack of the whip,” he adds. “And I shook the guy’s hand and stuck to my word.
“In hindsight, I should have probably stepped up then because I was struggling to make the weight from then. I could then have had a fight with Terence Crawford for mega money. So that’s one little regret. But, apart from that, I don’t think I could have planned my career any better than the way it happened, to be honest.”
Taylor never seemed to fully win over an English audience who couldn’t quite warm to this charismatic but at times chippy Scot, something that Andy Murray and even Chris Hoy also struggled with in the nascent days of their own successful sporting journeys.
Perhaps if Taylor’s PR machine had been spun differently by Eddie Hearn or Frank Warren in the early days his profile would have been far higher, although he believes he wouldn’t have achieved as much were it not for the guidance of Barry and Shane McGuigan who pushed him into title fights far earlier than others might have.
“Possibly my platform would have been a little bit bigger, yeah,” he adds. “But would they have pushed me at the same pace and took the same risks as the McGuigans did at the start? Maybe not. That was one of the main reasons why I went with them. I told them, ‘I’m 25, not a whippersnapper. I’ve not got three or four years to waste fighting journeymen’.
“I wanted to go on a steep rise to the top and Barry and Shane took me on that path and they believed in me. So, I’ve done it the right way. Maybe I’ve not had the best broadcasters or the best coverage but I’ve done it the best way and I’ve done it the hardest way. I could have been so much bigger with a major broadcaster behind me but that really doesn’t bother me that much.”
And what does he think of the Scottish boxing scene he has now left behind? Collins is being touted as “the next King of Scotland” and Taylor believes his fellow southpaw could become the country’s next world champion.
“He’s certainly got the minerals. He dedicates himself to the sport. He’s a gym rat. He’s always keeping fit even when he’s out of camp. You can see him doing all his Hyrox stuff. He lives the life and he’s a good fighter as well. He looks like he’s got the potential to go on to good things. I think Scottish boxing overall is in a good place – there’s a lot of good young talent coming through.”
That chapter has closed for Taylor but at least now he is back home with wife Danielle, plotting a future that doesn’t involve draining fight camps or gruelling weight cuts.
“We’re able to spend a little bit of time together now which is one thing we’ve not been able to do for a long, long time. So, that’s good. But I think I’m doing her head in as well, just sitting around not doing much. I’ll need to find something else to be getting on with.”
