“It’s hard to say this without sounding vicious, but you want to hurt him,” Josh Taylor suggests quietly on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning. “You want to go in there and do as much damage as possible. But, having said that, you hope you don’t do any real damage after the fight is over. You’re just there to do a job. You’re going to hit him as hard, as fast and as often as you can. In boxing you don’t get paid overtime. So you want to get him out of there as soon as possible. You’re not going in there just to tap and move. When you hit him, you want to hit him hard. And you want to hurt him.”
The seriousness of Taylor’s compelling and dangerous world title unification fight against Regis Prograis at the O2 in London on Saturday night is obvious. The two world super-lightweight champions are both undefeated and driven by a conviction they have the beating of each other in the most interesting fight to be staged in Britain this year. It is also the final of the World Boxing Super Series – a tournament which has featured eight of the best super-lightweights in the world. Prograis and Taylor have each won two fights in dominant style.
Written by Donald McRae
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/oct/21/josh-taylor-boxing-interview under the title “Josh Taylor: ‘I was always smaller than everyone … I would fight them straight away’”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
