While Martin Murray and Josh Taylor both picked up their expected wins in England and Scotland respectively, they did so to two very different effects. Taylor shined much brighter than Murray on this day.
Many time world title challenger Martin Murray (35-4-1, 17 KOs) had yet another title opportunity fall apart when Billy Joe Saunders withdrew from their fight for the second time. I found 38 year old Mexican junior middleweight Roberto Garcia (41-4, 24 KOs) to be a rather uninspiring replacement, as did most, and we got a mostly uninspiring fight in the ring. The Mexican walked forward mostly unsuccessfully while Murray tried to counter off the back foot. That was never his skill and certainly isn’t now, but it was good enough against a regional Mexican level fighter. The contest was never exciting, foul filled with Garcia losing two points along the way, and at times oddly refereed. To his credit Roberto did try to rally down the stretch and look for a miracle finish, but he obviously didn’t find it. Few walked away from this fight in England thinking either man had much to offer at world level.
Scotland, conversely, brought us a very entertaining, very high level junior welterweight bout won on the cards by rising local star Josh Taylor (13-0, 11 KOs). I bought into the conventional narrative coming into this one that the once elite Ukrainian former titleholder Viktor Postol (29-2, 12 KOs) was rapidly diminishing and being caught at the right time by the 27 Scot. Nope. Postol fought brilliantly in there. After a nip and tuck, difficult to separate first third of the fight, Postol dominated its middle section. In round seven he hurt Taylor and definitely had him in some trouble. His movement kept the younger fighter away and at a distance where Postol was comfortable firing stinging right hands to the body. After eight rounds, I had him up 5-3. Youth prevailed in the end though. Taylor had huge ninth and tenth rounds punctuated by a big knockdown on a pretty epic left. Postol got up and fought on, but Taylor controlled the eleventh too overall. The twelfth was tougher to score with both men understandably tired.
In the end I scored this one 115-112 for Josh Taylor thanks to him sweeping the last four rounds on my card including the 10-8 in the tenth. I am very thankful I felt he legitimately should get the win because the scorecards that came back in his favor were absolutely insane. 119-108 should be a year suspension. This wasn’t the sort of fight where I will defend odd cards because every round was close and could have conceivably gone either way, meaning scoring almost all of them for one is a logical possibility. No, instead Viktor Postol had at least four rounds where he CLEARLY won the round. Yet, not a single judge gave him more than three. This is just baffling and disappointing stuff, or at least it should be. Really it is just boxing being boxing.
