Even after a close review, trainer Ben Davison simply can’t see how his charge, Josh Taylor, got away with a “highway robbery”, as some have called Taylor's recent controversial points win over Jack Catterall.

Davison, however, admits the lightweight title unification bout on Feb. 26 at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland was plenty close and that it was not Taylor’s best night.

Taylor’s inaugural defense of his four lightweight belts did not go as planned, as he looked largely pedestrian against challenger and fellow southpaw Jack Catterall. The underdog Catterall seemed to outbox and confound Taylor for lengthy stretches of the fight and even managed to drop Taylor at one point.

While judge Howard Foster thought Catterall did enough to win (112-113), he was overruled by Ian John Lewis (114-111) and Victor Loughlin (113-112), who believed Taylor deserved the nod.

Davison understands the controversy surrounding the bout, but he thinks the fight was too close for it to be the sort of robbery and brazen instance of corruption that some fans, fighters, and members of the media have claimed it to be. Upon re-watching the bout and scoring it round-by-round, Davison came up with the same scorecard as Loughlin. Taylor has said he has been receiving death threats directed at himself and his fiancé.

“I had Josh by one round, 113-112, with two swing rounds which could have gone either way,” Davison told IFL TV. “[Scoring it for] Jack 113-112…a lot of people are saying that is the scorecard they have come out with.

“But that’s one round the other way and the score’s flipped. It was one of those fights.”

Robert Smith, the head of the British Boxing Board of Control, stated that an investigation was underway concerning the scoring of the fight.

Davison also did not agree with the outrage directed at the scorecard produced by judge Lewis, who had Taylor (19-0, 13 KOs) three points ahead of Catterall (26-1, 13 KOs).  

“That’s two rounds’ difference, isn’t it?” Davison said. “I’m not gonna sit here and criticize people. He’s a judge and that’s the scorecard [he produced]. It’s just a case of two different rounds. It is what it is. It’s a difficult situation, of course. You want to be respectful. I understand how they are feeling but at the same time I think it was a fight that could have gone either way. It was a tough fight to score.”

Some have argued that Catterall deserved a wide decision. Asked about that, Davison posited that those people were simply parroting public sentiment without having actually tried scoring the rounds themselves.

“I’ve seen a bit of that,” Davison said of the lopsided scorecards in favor of Catterall. “My other question would be, if we were there face to face and I said, ‘How did you score round 4? How did you score round this, round that? Have they actually sat down and scored the fight?

“I think a lot of people who have come to that conclusion haven’t scored the fight. I think there’s a lot of people that did sit there and they have a legitimate scorecard, most of those scorecards are quite close. But at the same time I do think it was one of those fights where Jack’s work was the cleaner work, the eye-catching moments that stood out to people, I can understand that.”

After the bout, Taylor suggested the effort to make the 140-pound limit was the reason for his lackluster performance. He said he is considering moving up to the welterweight ranks for his next fight, and would gladly welcome a rematch with Catterall at 147.