Josh Taylor’s trainer Ben Davison has given his response to the news that the fallout from his champion’s win over Jack Catterall has crossed over into the political world.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, The Speaker of the House of Commons and MP for Chorley (Catterall’s hometown) has sent a letter to the police following the controversial scoring. While the majority of the media believed Catterall won Ian John-Lewis awarded the fight to Taylor 114-111.
Speaking to Boxing Social about Hoyle’s letter Davison said “What were you gonna do have the C.I.D start scoring boxing matches? Ridiculous.”
Davison is in Nottingham this week to oversee the final preparations for Leigh Wood’s first defence of his WBA featherweight title against Michael Conlan on Saturday. While it is a fascinating fight Davison is still in the firing line from the events in Glasgow recently where Taylor remained undisputed super-lightweight champion.
“This controversy is only here in the U.K,” he said. “Over in America Andre Ward had Josh Taylor winning the fight. Now if people want to second guess his integrity that’s up to them. RING magazine had Josh Taylor winning the fight by one point. It is only here that there is this controversy. The fight was a difficult fight to score and there were a lot of swing rounds in there.”
Sadly, Taylor and his family have been subjected to abuse which has also left a stain on the event’s aftermath.
“It’s disappointing to see,” Davison remarked. “Not only the way that the public and social media and the way people have behaved there, but also professionals within the sport. The way that they’ve kept things going I think almost encouraged some of this behaviour to carry on knowing that Josh’s family are receiving disgusting messages.”
Davison and Taylor were recently named trainer and fighter of the year at this year’s British Boxing Board of Control awards. Davison revealed he and Taylor spoke about the Catterall fight at the event and told Boxing Social that a rematch at 147lbs is something they are interested in.
“We’re keen for it. It’s a great step towards [Josh] becoming a two-weight world champion. It becomes a huge pay-per-view fight in my opinion. A massively lucrative fight but of course we’re with the same team, the same advisor so I’m sure that a conclusion for what’s best for both fighters will be found.”
Click here to watch the full interview with Ben Davison as he discusses this Saturday’s Leigh Wood-Michael Conlan main event.