BRITISH boxing legend Ricky Hatton wants the undisputed light-welterweight champion Josh Taylor to fight Teofimo Lopez next after defeating Jose Ramirez.
The Scottish fighter knocked Ramirez down twice on his way to a narrow 114-112 win on the scorecards.
The win saw Taylor pick up the WBC and WBO titles to go alongside the WBA, IBF, and Ring magazine titles he already held.
In his new column for Metro, Hatton congratulated Taylor, saying: “It was unbelievable what Josh accomplished.
“It was a great day for British boxing and for Scottish boxing and I still think the best is yet to come from him.
“It will be interesting to see what he does next and maybe the next move will be to move to welterweight.”
Hatton went on to name unified lightweight world champion Lopez as a possible opponent, and claims the American could make the jump up from the lightweight division.
He continued: “Or, you’ve got what would be a good fight against Teofimo Lopez, he could move up from lightweight no problem.
“Then Josh is getting his defining fight in the sense that it is against a real big name.
“He has won five world titles, is undisputed super-lightweight champion but then you get the defining fights that follow.
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“I had my first world title against Kostya Tszyu before Luis Collazo, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
“He has won all the titles, now he is going to get that big defining name. And no one deserves it more than him.”
Lopez, 23, is willing to fight Taylor, but he does not want the fight to be staged in Britain.
Speaking ahead of his title defence on 19 June against George Kambosos Jr, he told the Mirror: “I won’t take that fight in the UK.
“Not because I don’t believe I would beat him in the UK, it’s just that I can see how much of the animosity there is from folks caring that I’m ‘not undisputed’ at 135, so I could just see the favouritism over there.
“That fight will be somewhere over here, but at the end of the day I’m slowly becoming a cash cow in this division and these guys can make a better paycheque fighting me where I choose.
“I do eventually want to fight in the UK, however, I don’t want to give anybody the upper hand over me, I’ve done that numerous times so the whole thing now is about playing my cards right.
“But I do want to make those fights happen, though.”
Taylor, however, appears to have his sight set on a fight with Terence Crawford after winning his unification fight.
After the win, he said: “I’d like to go up to 147 and chase a real, real big fight like Terence Crawford.
“I’m not gonna sit and call him out and stuff, I think he’s a great fighter, but I just think, two undisputed champions going at it at 147 would be awesome, amazing.”
Source: Boxing - thesun.co.uk
