By Craig MacKay

Scotland boasts a proud boxing tradition, with famous Scotland-born fighters Ken Buchanan, Benny Lynch and Jim Watt all holding legitimate world titles during their respective careers.  In recent years, Scotsmen Scott Harrison and Alex Arthur have held the WBO title at featherweight and super-featherweight respectively.

Harrison has left the sport due to his well publicised battles with drugs and alcohol; he is currently serving time behind bars in Spain, with a comeback looking decidedly unlikely.

Arthur lost his title in the ring to Englishman Nicky Cook in 2008 and has since stepped up in weight to campaign in the lightweight division.  This leaves the country with no current world champions, many fans are wondering where the next one will come from.

Hoping to take over the reigns from Scott Harrison in the featherweight division is Paul Appleby, 21.  In beating fellow Scot John Simpson in June 2008, Appleby became the youngest ever British featherweight champion, in only his twelfth fight and in his first twelve rounder.  The future looked extremely bright for Appleby and he won his next two fights comfortably, beating Esham Pickering and Juan Garcia Martin.

Appleby then clashed with fellow unbeaten fighter Martin Lindsay in Belfast, Paul was stopped after six ferocious rounds by the Ulsterman, losing his Lonsdale belt in the process.  This loss certainly does not signal an end to Paul Appleby, in fact it may make him a better boxer in the long term, forcing him to pay much needed attention to the defensive side of the game.

There is no doubt in my mind that Appleby will move beyond the domestic level in the near future, there are rumours of a European title shot after his next few fights.  The jump between domestic and European levels to world titles is a big one.  However, for the next few years Appleby would be well advised to stay away from the Chris John’s, Yuriokis Gamboa’s and Cristobal Cruz’s of the division.

Moving up to super featherweight and Scotland has a commonwealth champion in Ricky Burns.  Burns won the vacant commonwealth title in September 2008 with a win over the unheralded Ghanaian Osumana Akaba.  Since then he has defended his title three times including an impressive seventh round stoppage of Manchester’s Michael Gomez, who had just nine months earlier put up a stiff challenge for Amir Khan’s Commonwealth lightweight title.

Burns has been vocal in his quest for a world title, calling out the unbeaten Kevin Mitchell and current WBO champion Roman Martinez; Mitchell and Martinez are slated to meet in September.  If Burns can keep winning he certainly appears next in line for a shot at the title and although he would have to give the performance of his career, he has every chance of becoming a world champion in 2010.

The lightweight division is probably the most competitive in terms of Scottish boxers, with Alex Arthur, Willie Limond and Lee McAllister all vying to be top-dog.

Limond, in fact, already claims to be a world champion after defeating Ryan Barret in May for the vacant WBU lightweight title.  The WBU, however, is not recognised as a legitimate world title and nor should it be, fifteen out of their eighteen titles are currently vacant. 

It seems that a boxer willing to pay the WBU sanctioning fees will get a shot at a vacant title, calling themselves ‘world champion’ is not only deluding to themselves, it also cheats the fans who pay to watch their fights.  Boxing suffers a great deal due to the fractured nature of the world titles.

Boxers supporting organizations like the WBU only adds to the problem.  Limond seems content to defend his title for the time being, although with John Murray losing his British lightweight title on the scales there may be a possibility in the future for Limond to aim for a strap worthy of recognition in the Lonsdale belt.

Lee McAllister is also a former WBU champion, at two weights no less; he is currently the Commonwealth lightweight champion, a title formerly held by Amir Khan.  The ‘Aberdeen Assassin’ gave John Murray a good fight in January for the British title before being stopped in the eighth, Lee could be a match for any boxer on the domestic scene.

Although the world level looks to be out of reach for Limond and McAllister, fellow lightweight Alex Arthur wants to have a world title shot within his next three fights.

Arthur’s biggest win to date came when he stopped Koba Gogoladze in 2007 for the interim WBO super-featherweight world title. Arthur was then supposed to face the talented Juan Guzman for the title proper but, not for the last time, Guzman had trouble making weight and moved up a division, leaving Arthur to inherit the full title.

It had looked for some time that Arthur was struggling to make the 130lb super-feather limit himself, after losing his WBO strap to Nicky Cook in September last year the Scotsman decided to abandon hopes of a rematch and moved up to lightweight.  His one fight at 135lb, a 93 second stoppage of journeyman Mohamed Benbiou, told us little about his world title aspirations, but Arthur looked in good shape at his new weight.

With Juan Manuel Marquez intent on looking for big fights at higher weights, despite his clash with Floyd Mayweather being postponed, there may well be a number of vacant world titles at lightweight up for grabs. 

You can rule out Arthur being matched with current WBC champion and (discounting Marquez) the division no.1 Edwin Valero, but with Frank Warren as his promoter a shot at a vacant WBO title could be just around the corner should Arthur look impressive in his next two fights.

Look above the lightweight division and the landscape of Scottish boxing is pretty bare in world terms, but a glance across the Atlantic gives us Scotsman Craig McEwan.

McEwan is promoted by Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden Boy promotions, he is trained by Freddie Roach at the famous wild card gym in Los Angeles, and sports an impressive 15-0-0 (9) record.  Having never fought outside of America, he may still be relatively unknown in Scotland.  Still, the Edinburgh born fighter may represent the future of Scottish boxing.

An impressive distance win over Andy Lee’s conqueror, and star of the Contender TV show, Brian Vera in Craig’s last outing made a number of boxing experts sit up and take notice.  Despite having campaigned at middleweight for the majority of his fledgling career, Roach expects McEwan to be challenging for honours in the light-middleweight division in the near future.  This could prove to be a good decision as, with the exception of Paul Williams, who has the ability to drift between welter and middleweight with ease, there doesn’t appear to be many fighters that stand out on the world stage.

McEwan still has a long way to go before realistically challenging for world honours but in training with Freddie Roach and sparring with boxers such as Bernard Hopkins, he is only going to improve and enhance his chances of becoming a world champion.

There is a good chance that one of the aforementioned names, or maybe even someone out of the blue, can step up to the plate and win a world title in the next couple of years, following in the footsteps of the Scottish greats Buchanan, Lynch and Watt.