Formerly undisputed super lightweight world champion Josh Taylor started the year with all four belts, but he has now relinquished his WBC, WBA, and most recently IBF titles and holds only the WBO title as he aims for a return match with Jack Catterall, whom he defeated controversially in February.
“Yes I vacated and I will continue to do whatever it takes to be in a position to make the rematch with Jack Catterall happen,” Taylor told Sky Sports. “He is with BOXXER now and therefore it should be easy-peasy to make seeing as they work so closely with Top Rank.”
The IBF has ordered #1 Jeremias Ponce and #2 Subriel Matias to fight for the vacant IBF world title.
Matias is going to DESTROY Ponce.
That’s what happens when you become undisputed champion, you suddenly have four different organizations looking at you for mandatory fights and they don’t care if you had one which was controversial, you satisfied the WBO with the first Catterall fight, so here comes the rest of them with their fights. Sometimes you can get lucky and have one fight satisfy more than one organization, like Devin Haney will if he ends up fighting Loma after Kambosos.
Jeremias Ponce – Subriel Matias for the vacant title. Should be an excellent fight!
Respect to Taylor. Fighting Catterall is the right thing. Shame in the governing bodies that are robbing the winner of this fight of a unified status
Why would he do that for?
The Catterall rematch is probably going to pay a lot better than fighting Ponce will.
Catterall boxed your socks off, Mr. Taylor. You won 3 rounds, MAX. You are not the TRUE champion.
but hes doing everything he can to secure a rematch with Catterall to leave no doubt.
He is doing everything to give his opponent a rematch after a controversial win. I must give respect to that.
Not to defend the alphabet boys, but a lot of weight divisions were around well before they entered the scene in earnest. That said, (a) ‘world’ championship titles aren’t really an accordation of being the best in the world anymore; they’re awarded to “the best who’s willing to put up with our garbage,” and often times fighters seek them more for marketability than to demonstrate supremacy, and (b) while I could easily make an argument that weight divisions need to be realigned, there’s a lot of merit to having smaller gaps between the divisions at lower weights. A 3 lb. difference between Cruiserweights? Not significant. A 3 lb. difference between Strawweights? Nearly 3% of their body weight.
Watched the Catterall fight very closely and replayed some rounds. Lots of headlocks from both guys, they both headlocks each other just about an equal amount of times. Also, I wasn’t convinced Catterall went out there and took round 12. And, the point deduction off of Taylor was a bs call. If Catterall really won, it was because of a gift point deduction, otherwise, pretty much a draw. Plus, in Taylor’s home country. If it was 6-5-1 in rounds for Taylor, the knockdown and point deduction only thing that had him losing by 1 point.
Hey ya Tom. So, you rewatched the Catterall – Taylor fight and, in your book, it was that close? Thank you for your input.
Was never that high on Taylor. Thought he lost to Catteral, and Prograis. If Ramirez had better defense he would have squeezed a decision. Either was he gets smoked at welterweight.
Lol. What’s he afraid of.
The WBA and the WBC are the MOST corrupted boxing entities w/ no credibility whatsoever. Many boxing pundits have brought up this subject on numerous occasions. They created 17 categories per boxing-sanctioning body, and if you multiply that by 5 four – (WBA, WBC, WBF, WBO, and the IBF), we end up having 85 Champions. They have created a system similar to a junk fast-food business; the more crap they sell, the more they earn…TAYLOR did a good move.
its funny because out of all the undisputed champions only Taylor seem get pressure………