Away from the Battlegrounds, Top Rank is Boxing’s Top Newsmaker

Scarcely a day goes by without a news story concerning Top Rank and today was no exception. Bob Arum’s promotional company was in the news not once, but twice, and both stories accentuated boxing’s global reach.

Scotland’s Josh Taylor, the WBA and IBF 140-pound champion, announced that he is joining the Top Rank family, having signed a multi-fight deal. The “Tartan Tornado” had been affiliated with Barry McGuigan’s Cyclone Promotions since turning pro. McGuigan’s son Shane McGuigan trained the undefeated Taylor for all 16 of Taylor’s pro fights.

This is a bitter pill for the McGuigans who have been in this situation before. In August of 2017, Carl Frampton left Cyclone Promotions to sign with Frank Warren. While with the McGuigans, Frampton became a world champion in two weight classes. He and Shane McGuigan were honored as the 2016 Boxer of the Year and the 2016 Trainer of the Year, respectively, by the Boxing Writers Association of America.

The McGuigans took Carl Frampton to court and by all indications they will be going to court again. “Josh Taylor is under an exclusive worldwide promotional contract with Cyclone Promotions,” said Barry McGuigan on social media. “We are saddened that Josh has felt the need to attempt (italics mine) to break his contract in this manner and frustrated at those who have caused him to do so.”

By signing with Top Rank, Taylor is in line to fight Jose Carlos Ramirez who, like Taylor, owns two pieces of the 140-pound title. The winner would join a very select list of four-belt champions, a list that includes only Terence Crawford and Oleksandr Usyk among active fighters. Ramirez has a date with Viktor Postol in Haikou, China, on Feb. 2, a fight that isn’t looked upon as a hard test for the former U.S. Olympian.

In an unrelated development, it came out today that Top Rank had secured the rights to promote Artur Beterbiev’s light heavyweight title defense against Fanlong Meng.  Top Rank came in the back door, so to speak, after the winning bidder, a Chinese company that intended to plant the fight in China, defaulted. As the second top bidder (there were only two), the right to promote the fight reverted to Top Rank.

Beterbiev holds the WBC and IBF belts and is the lineal champion in the division. He will be a massive favorite over IBF mandatory challenger Meng. The fight is expected to take place in the early Spring in Montreal or Quebec City.

Beterbiev would have been in a very uncomfortable position if the fight had gone to China, caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. As Thomas Hauser noted in an article that appeared in these pages, the former Russian Olympian is a devout Muslim. China has come under attack by human rights groups in recent months after files were leaked indicating that many Muslims in China had been remanded to “re-education” camps in the western province of Xinjiang.

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual for Top Rank which is promoting shows on back-to-back Saturdays beginning this Saturday in Atlantic City.

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