- Former unified champions meet for Taylor’s title at 140lbs
- Taylor and López out to jump-start stalled ascents at MSG
- Send Bryan a tweet at @BryanAGraham or email him
Xander Zayas is off to a good start in the co-feature bout. The blue-chip junior middleweight prospect from San Juan dropped Ronald Cruz with an exquisite counter right in the first 30 seconds of the opening round, bringing the Puerto Rico Day weekend crowd to its feet. Cruz has steadied himself since, but Zayas has continued to bank rounds working behind the jab and appears in complete control through six frames of their scheduled eight-rounder.
Hello and welcome to New York for tonight’s junior welterweight title fight between Josh Taylor and Teófimo López. We’re ringside at the Theater at Madison Square Garden for an eagerly awaited clash featuring a pair of former unified champions from different weight classes once bound for stardom but whose stars have dimmed over the past two years for various reasons. A quick refresher from today’s fight preview:
Taylor (19-0, 13 KOs), a stylish, aggressive southpaw who first shot to fame with a series of wins over current or former world champions Regis Prograis, Ivan Baranchyk and Viktor Postol, earned the biggest win of his career when he outpointed José Ramírez in a May 2021 unification bout, scoring a pair of knockdowns along the way. That made him the first British fighter, and only the fifth man in boxing’s four-belt era, to become an undisputed champion at any weight.
But the Tartan Tornado was fortunate to escape with a split-decision win in a mandatory defense against the unheralded Jack Catterall eight months later. He’s since vacated three of his four title belts in pursuit of a rematch that failed to materialize after Taylor tore his plantar fascia in March. While the Scot remains the alpha dog of boxing’s refractured junior welterweight division, it’s been more than 15 months since he’s made to show it inside the ropes.