The 5 Best Opponents for Josh Taylor After Loss To Teofimo Lopez

Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way everyone expects it to.

Favored heading into his high-profile fight against Teofimo Lopez, Josh Taylor lost to Teofimo Lopez by unanimous decision Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. With his first professional defeat, the 32-year-old also fumbled away the WBO and lineal junior welterweight championships to the brash trash-talking Lopez.

“No excuses,” Taylor said after the fight. “It wasn’t my best. The better man won tonight. I’ve got no excuses. I fought to the best of my ability. He was better than me tonight. It is what it is. Congratulations to Teofimo.”

Having not fought since early 2022, Taylor looked rusty against the younger, more agile Lopez, who took advantage and cruised to victory by scores of 115-113, 115-113 and 117-111 from all three judges.

The defeat prompted the B/R combat team to ponder some of the options he might have when it comes time for him to return to the ring later this year or sometime in 2024.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought or two of your own in the comments.

Taylor arrived to the Lopez fight as the seventh-ranked fighter on The Ring’s pound-for-pound list, a placement that has him a single spot ahead of one Devin Haney.

For those unaware, Haney is one of a small handful of undisputed four-belt champions in the sport, having earned and retained that recognition at lightweight with a pair of wins over George Kambosos Jr. in 2022 and a subsequent defeat of Vasiliy Lomachenko last month.

He has multiple suitors at 135 pounds but has long claimed difficulty in maintaining the weight, prompting suggestions he’ll head up the ladder to try his luck at 140.

Which, if he’s seeking to fight the top guy, means a date with Taylor. And unlike a lot of other would-be showdowns between champions, it wouldn’t be so hard to arrange.

Both men have fought under Top Rank Boxing’s promotional banner and company boss Bob Arum said during the run-up to Saturday’s fight that he’d be presenting Haney’s team with a series of options for his next fight.

First on the list: The Taylor-Lopez winner.

“Absolutely,” Taylor told FightHype when asked if he would face Haney. “I’m open to fighting anybody.”

Of course, before Taylor entertains the idea of a Haney fight, Jack Catterall would like a chance to settle some unfinished business.

Catterall is the 29-year-old Brit who met Taylor on his home turf in Scotland 16 months ago and emerged from the 12-round fracas with the belief he’d done enough to win.

It was a view shared by many fans in attendance at the SSE Hydro Arena and several more media types who were either there at ringside or watching on TV/live stream.

But it didn’t go down quite that easily.

Instead, Taylor was awarded a split decision in which two judges scored it 114-111 and 113-112 in his direction to offset the dissenting judge who saw Catterall, who cut Taylor around the left eye and dropped him in the eighth round, as the rightful winner.

Promoter Ben Shalom, in fact, went a step beyond in his assessment.

“I’ve watched these decisions as a fan and to be part of it is sickening,” he said.

Taylor and Catterall were indeed scheduled to meet in a rematch earlier this year but it was scrubbed by a Taylor injury. Then, because the Catterall fight was a voluntary defense, it took a back seat to making the match with Lopez, who was the WBO’s No. 1 contender.

A fight with Haney is possible business. A fight with Catterall is unfinished business.

Which presumably means a fight between Taylor and Regis Prograis is repeat business.

The two men fought in late 2020 as part of the series of events that ultimately unified the four major titles in the 140-pound division. Taylor arrived as the IBF champion and Prograis as the WBA champion and the Scotsman emerged after 12 compelling and competitive rounds with a majority decision in which he won two scorecards and was even on a third,

To say both have been successful in the aftermath is accurate.

Taylor went on to unify all four belts with a defeat of Jose Carlos Ramirez seven months later, while Prograis has KO’d four straight opponents and returned to belted status when he picked up the WBC strap that Taylor vacated when discussing a move to welterweight.

Only one of the four foes has gone past six rounds with the once-beaten New Orleans native, who’ll defend his WBC title against Danielito Zorrilla next weekend and is likely to have Taylor’s name on his lips (again) if he gets past his unheralded 20th-ranked challenger.

“For me, the number one guy on my list is Josh Taylor,” Prograis told BoxingScene.com.

When you’re considering your next opponent, the “Face of Boxing” isn’t a bad choice.

OK, it may be a title Gervonta Davis gave himself after a defeat of Ryan Garcia earlier this year, but the legitimacy of a would-be fight between he and Taylor is inarguable.

The 28-year-old from Baltimore is unbeaten in 29 fights and has both scored 27 KOs and established himself as a genuine seat-filler across events in Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Atlanta within the last two years alone.

He briefly shared championship space with Taylor at 140 pounds following a defeat of Mario Barrios in 2021 and has held title claims of various worth at 130 and 135 pounds, too.

The stoppage of Garcia was his third straight in a run that’s seen no fight go past nine rounds and his blend of methodical savagery and single shot power makes a fight against Taylor, who’s quicker with his feet and his hands but not as devastating, a fascinating possibility.

And don’t think Taylor, who wasn’t particularly pleased to have Davis billed as a champion in his weight class, hasn’t pondered it.

“If he wants to call his self a champion,” Taylor told ESPN’s Max Kellerman (via Boxing Scene), “the only way he can do that is face myself.”

What about a rematch?

For a proud fighter like Taylor, he’d be chomping at the bit to square away the only loss of his career.

The case can be made that Taylor’s long layoff eroded his skills to the point where Lopez could take advantage. A feared counterpuncher, Taylor simply had no answers for “The Takeover” and meekly took the L without providing significant resistance.

The smart money here says that a rematch would go a little differently. A shorter layoff for Taylor and time to reassess what happened on Saturday night would be the quickest way for the 32-year-old to get back on his throne.

The biggest question is would Lopez want to fight Taylor with more lucrative opponents on his horizon.