BARRY McGuigan insisted last night that Eddie Hearn’s idea of Josh Taylor taking on Lewis Ritson in front of 60,000 fans at a sell-out St James’ Park would be a step back for Scotland’s first unified world champion in almost 50 years. Having battled his way past Viktor Postol, Ryan Martin, Ivan Baranchyk and Regis Prograis in the last two years – four fighters who went into the ring with just one defeat amongst them, and even that was against the illustrious Terence Crawford – there is a school of thought that now is the time for Taylor to take care of his bank balance rather than his trophy cabinet and Hearn could make that happen.
But the man who masterminded the Scot’s progress to unified world champion in just 16 pro fights is adamant that the only policy is to continue aggressively taking on world class opponents. Assuming Jose Ramirez takes care of Postol in February, that means a showdown with the American – either in Edinburgh or at Madison Square Garden – this time next year.
With the greatest respect, Eddie [Hearn] would love the Ritson fight because he has his own fighter there,” said McGuigan. “Eddie is great and we want to work with Eddie but we want the winner of Ramirez and Postol. Give Josh two or three months to recover and get his eye back again, keep training the whole way through then hit the ground running after that.
“I don’t want to be arrogant but for us that [Ritson] is a step back, it isn’t a step forward. We have always made the right decisions. We’ve matched him aggressively. We’ve pushed him hard and got the right results. We’re not going to turn back at this stage. He wins the unified title, then we might consider that kind of thing.
“We want him to be one of the greatest British fighters of all time. And he won’t achieve that fighting these fights. With respect to Lewis Ritson, he is not in Josh Taylor’s league. Ramirez should beat Postol but there are no guarantees. I want him to beat Postol then come to Edinburgh Castle or Madison Square Garden. Because Josh can fight anywhere. That is the one we are interested in. And that is the one he is interested in.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here