It has been a hard and short road for Josh Taylor in the boxing business, but on Saturday in Glasgow, he will end a long break when he meets Ekow Essuman. It is a fight to see how much Taylor has left.

The Scot is now 34, and was only 28 when he won his first world title in just his 15th fight. He was matched hard against unbeaten men, fast-tracked in testing fights from the very start. He was an Olympian, he was not a kid; he wanted to move quickly.

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In 2021, he travelled alone to Las Vegas under the dismal canopy of Covid, and behind closed doors he became the undisputed champion at super-lightweight. He remains the only British boxer to hold all the titles in the four-belt era.

However, the Covid restrictions denied him his real night of glory and history at the Virgin property that night, where he dropped the unbeaten Jose Ramirez twice. It would have been an unforgettable fight at home in front of a capacity crowd and not just a few dozen lucky, barely audible punters in the lifeless echo chamber of another Covid-hit arena.

At the time, there was bold talk of a move to welterweight and a super-fight with Terence Crawford. This was not fantasy; this was discussed by Bob Arum, who promoted the pair at the time.

First, there would be a triumphant return to a British ring for a defence against Jack Catterall, a lad from Chorley with no malice. It was meant to be routine, an easy night for Taylor. In the end, it was a bad night and the controversial decision in his favour led to uproar; the win hurt more than a loss. The fallout was personal, brutal, ugly, and it upset Taylor.

“It was a rough time, and a lot of stuff was said,” remembered Taylor. “I had to move on, I had to just get back to fighting.”

Taylor was under pressure to fulfil his mandatory challenger requirements, and in his next fight, he entered the ring having been stripped of all but one of his four belts; he lost in New York to Teofimo Lopez and then, after an injury break, he lost a bitter rematch with Catterall last May.

It was a difficult time for Taylor, and his excellent night – becoming the undisputed champion at 140lb – was a distant memory.

His world tumbled, make no mistake. He was in a dark hole, a place familiar to a lot of fighters. Late last year, he started to slowly find his feet, got back in the gym, did a deal with Frank Warren, and the Essuman fight was made. It has been a year away from the ring, a year in exile, and perhaps Taylor needed that time to breathe and think and make sure he wanted to continue fighting; it’s not the length of the break that really matters to a boxer, it is the quality of the break.

Essuman is two years older than Taylor, a former British welterweight champion with four defences, and he has only lost once in 22 fights. He is unfashionable, hard, principled, and in his last two fights, he was meant to lose. He did not. It is a very difficult first fight at welterweight for Taylor.

There is a belt of some description on the line – the vacant WBO International title – but the real prize is the test of Taylor’s future. A good win and he is right in the mix at welterweight; a tricky win, a loss or a draw, and Sunday morning will be a time for some hard decisions. Essuman, meanwhile, is in the best form of his life and will continue to be ignored even if he wins, which is certainly possible.

Nobody ever said boxing is fair. A third Taylor vs Catterall fight would do great business and would not need a single gaudy bauble to validate it. The problem is, Essuman never reads the script.

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