British Officials Continue Taylor-Catteral Decision Investigation

The British Boxing Board of Control continues to investigate the controversial decision win in late February for Undisputed Jr. Welterweight titleholder Josh Taylor over unbeaten contender Jack Catterall. And, the head of their governing body says it will be next week before their conclusion and any possible action will be taking.

Speaking Monday afternoon to Sky Sports, BBBoC Secretary Robert Smith made clear that they want to hear out one judge who had a particularly egregious card,

🗣️ “We’re dealing with that next week.”

British Boxing Board of Control general secretary Robert Smith has vowed to look into the controversial scoring of Josh Taylor’s win over Jack Catterall. 👇 pic.twitter.com/2bkClBEIJ1

— Sky Sports Boxing (@SkySportsBoxing) March 7, 2022

“We’re dealing with that next week, as I’ve been very clear about with everybody. So, we’ve taken all the reports in. We got (judge) Ian John Lewis coming in for a hearing. Once we’ve done that, we’ll put out something on what’s happened. There’s nothing changed on that,” Lewis told the outlet.

As we wrote two weeks ago, the narrow decision for the Scot Taylor fighting in Glasgow was immediately criticized for having at best been too generous or worse, that the decision was biased to the hometown champ.

This with how effective the Englishman Catterall had been landing throughout the bout, the fact he knocked the champ down in the fight and that Taylor only landed approximately 70 punches for the entire fight.

The BBBoC wants to know more, particularly about judges Lewis and Victor Laughlin. Specifically, Lewis giving Taylor an early lead by giving him three of the first four rounds (critical in his one point card). This, even though Taylor did very little to win more than a single round out of the first four.

Taylor had returned to his home country to defend the WBA/IBF/WBC and WBO World titles against the 14-1 underdog Catterall. However, he got much more than he bargained for from the beginning of the bout.

Catterall seemingly controlled the fight throughout, scoring with straight lefts and body shots, and he eventually scored the only knock down of the fight. That came with two hard overhand lefts that dropped Taylor onto all fours in the eighth round stunning the crowd.

Catterall seemed at that point to have a significant lead, including on our card, where BFW had Catterall up 5-3 with the knockdown counting for a 10-8 round and a 77-74 advantage.

Taylor did connect with some straight lefts late in the fight, but it was only occasional and it certainly should be questioned that all three judges gave Taylor the decisive 12th round of the fight despite him landing only three punches.

BFW had Catterall winning the final round for a 7-5 advantage on the cards.

For his part, the challenger Catterall reacted for the first time post-defeat on social media the morning after the bout. Posting on Instagram:

“You know what hurts the most, it wasn’t for me I done all of this for my family my team my town and country. My baby girl and misses, our future. Today I should of been waking up with all of the belts,” Catterall wrote.

“15 months out the ring, they all wrote me off. Fucked me in every way possible for over two years, finally got the fight. Sacrificed everything to fight one of the top p4p ranked fighters, gave him a lesson. For what. Boxing shame on you. Judges 🖕🏽Dreams stolen 💔 “

And, that’s what the BBBoC is trying to get to the bottom of with the questionable cards that favored Taylor.