Bob Arum can’t quite pinpoint what went wrong for Josh Taylor on Saturday night in Glasgow.

Maybe, as Taylor indicated, he applied too much pressure on himself while preparing for a huge event in his home country. Perhaps, too, Jack Catterall was better than even Taylor, who touted Catterall’s skills before their fight, expected during their 12-round, 140-pound title fight at The OVO Hydro.

Regardless, the Scottish star’s promoter didn’t recognize the version of Taylor that Catterall dropped during the eighth round and pushed during much of their fight for Taylor’s IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO championships.

“He was terrible,” Arum told BoxingScene.com. “It’s the worst I’ve seen him perform, and I’ve watched most of his fights over the last couple of years. He certainly didn’t look like the guy who beat Ramirez.”

The 31-year-old Taylor certainly was sharper when he dropped Jose Ramirez twice, once apiece in the sixth and seventh rounds, on his way to winning a 12-round majority decision and becoming boxing’s fully unified 140-pound champion May 22 at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. Their back-and-forth fight was close on the cards as well – so competitive that it would’ve been a draw without those two knockdowns for Taylor (114-112, 114-112, 114-112).

England’s Catterall, also a southpaw, got off to a strong start and prevented Taylor from getting into a rhythm. Catterall was hard to hit during the first half of their bout, when he was the more active, accurate boxer, but too much holding eventually cost him a point during the 10th round and he faded during the final few rounds.

Taylor (19-0, 13 KOs) won on the cards of two judges – England’s Ian John-Lewis (114-111) and Scotland’s Victor Loughlin (113-112), who scored eight and seven rounds, respectively, for the defending champion. Another judge from England, Howard Foster, scored their fight 113-112 for Catterall (26-1, 13 KOs).

CompuBox counted 47 more punches landed for Catterall (120-of-525 to 73-of-306), who unofficially connected on more power shots (81-of-267 to 57-of-179) and more jabs (39-of-258 to 16-of-127).

Arum, whose company obviously has a vested interest in Taylor, doesn’t view Taylor’s narrow win as controversial.

“I don’t think it was a very good fight,” Arum said. “I don’t know what people are talking about. I had Taylor winning by maybe a couple points.”

The 90-year-old Arum isn’t convinced, either, that the 5-foot-10 Taylor needs to move up from the 140-pound limit to the welterweight division for his next fight.

“I talked to him [Monday],” Arum said. “We’re gonna evaluate him with a nutritionist and determine what he should do. So, again, emotionally he said [he must move up]. And he said he had a nutritionist for this fight, but who knows how qualified the nutritionist was? And we’ll get into that in the weeks ahead.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.