sport news Josh Taylor is ready to deliver a 'nasty surprise' to local hero Teofimo Lopez ... trends now
View
comments
The spark which ignited the world championship fire in Josh Taylor came when the bullying of him as a small boy escalated to a menacing climax as an older gang tried to tie him by the neck to a wire fence.
‘That was the first time I snapped,’ he says. ‘My dad kept telling me the day would come when I’d have to fight back. This was it. I broke free and turned on the chief culprit, who was older than me and the biggest of them. Battered him to the ground. Then I went after two more and they were scared. In shock.
‘They’d been picking on me and my pals for weeks, when we played football on a rough pitch at the site of the closed pits. Taking our ball off us. Threatening. Pushing me round. The little one. After that, they stayed clear.
‘I was still under 10, but I’d learned first-hand the lesson dad had been teaching me. That unless you stand your ground, bullies will keep going after you.’
Prestonpans, population 10,460, is a former mining village and fishing harbour on the East Lothian coast of Scotland.
Josh Taylor enjoys the high life during a visit to the Empire State Building in New York
Taylor will defend his WBO and Ring magazine light-welterweight belts on Saturday night
Not only a thousand miles away but light-years distant from Manhattan, where Taylor will defend his WBO and Ring magazine light-welterweight belts against the dangerous native New Yorker of Honduran origin, Teofimo Lopez. Yet the task for Taylor remains much the same as when he was a schoolboy. Madison Square Garden can be a daunting place to box a local boy wonder, but the flame which burned through his formative battles will be blazing again.
‘Prestonpans was a tough old place to grow up,’ says Taylor. ‘The mines which employed so many had shut, with Thatcher and all that. The brickworks, soap factories and salt works followed them. All gone. Hard times. Not much for people to do. Except there was always fighting.
‘I was never the one looking for trouble. Not when I was tiny with friends who were all bigger than me and had hair on their chests. I didn’t have any big brothers or cousins to help me out.
‘But it was a good place
