Josh Taylor’s former trainer Shane McGuigan has given a strong assessment of his old tutee’s performance against Jack Catterall.

The champion was very fortunate to retain his undisputed super-lightweight world titles on Saturday night, winning a decision which is now being investigated by the British Boxing Board.

Up to 2019, Taylor was trained by Shane McGuigan and promoted/managed by his father Barry McGuigan.

However, following his unification win over Regis Prograis, he split from the McGuigans and joined up with Ben Davison, Top Rank and MTK Global.

He then went on to beat Jose Ramirez and collect the final two super-lightweight belts, which he arguably should have lost to Catterall on Saturday.

McGuigan told Boxing Social: “I thought Catterall won.

“I didn’t think it was the same Josh Taylor that was in my gym.

“Disappointed. Done a lot of hard work, five years of fantastic work and honestly it frustrates me to see him boxing like that.

“I know it’s not even the weight, it’s simply the fact that he’s trying to change his style.

“He said something in an interview that he looked back at the Regis Prograis fight and thought he could’ve done certain things better.

“And actually, right now, he should be looking back at that fight and thinking – it actually makes you more vulnerable.

“Because he’s getting out-jabbed. He’s a high paced pressure fighter that’s fantastic on the inside, but his hands were down by his chest, he’s walking into punches and getting his head jabbed off.

“He needs to do better than that.”

Taylor has now said he intends to move up to welterweight.

Asked if this is the right move, McGuigan said: “No, he’s gonna lose his attributes going up to 147lbs, he needs to stay at 140lbs.”

Giving his verdict on Catterall’s performance, McGuigan added: “I didn’t even think he was that good.

“I’m not doing it to be disrespectful to Jack Catterall – he was great on the jab, he was great at slowing the pace down.

“It wasn’t like a George Kambosos Jr vs Teofimo Lopez where he really shone, he just did the basics well, diffused him on the inside and Taylor got switched off on the jab.

“Josh has a habit of looking for perfect shots and you can’t be a perfectionist when you’re working with Josh Taylor, you need to think about what he does well.

“He punches great in combinations, he closes the gap well, some great hand defences and he’s a great attacking fighter, don’t take that away from him.”

https://talksport.com/sport/boxing/1...ack-catterall/