How Taylor has 'unlocked a darkness' with trainer Scott

Nothing says all in a good day’s work more than shredded, bloodied knuckles.

Or at least, that is the gory version of the saying when Ezra Taylor’s high-profile trainer Malik Scott talks about the “dark days” of merciless work it has taken to get his fighter ready to face Willy Hutchinson.

Nottingham’s Taylor, who boasts an undefeated professional record of 13 wins with nine knockouts, relocated to Los Angeles to join American Scott – a trainer who has both fought and worked with former heavyweight world champion Deontay Wilder.

Scott says he has “high expectations” for 31-year-old Taylor when the light heavyweight steps into the ring to face Scotland’s Hutchinson at Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena on Saturday.

And the reason he anticipates Taylor will “come through with flying colours” is down to the claret stains that quickly became the hallmark of training sessions where no punch has been wasted in search of greater body-shaking blows.

“There’s times when we were in California during camp and his knuckles would just be bloody,” Scott told BBC East Midlands Today.

“One thing a fighter is always going to know how to do is throw punches. But what I’m talking about is power.

“I’m making sure Ezra is bending his knees, is turning his knuckles when he hits the shield I hold, and it’s mission accomplished with bloody knuckles. I look at that as a badge of honour because I’m doing my job and he is doing his.

“As time goes on those knuckles don’t get bloody no more because he is toughening and roughing them up. And this, to me, is how you take someone that hits hard and you turn them into a solid power puncher.”

When Taylor speaks of the work he has done with Scott in California, he talks of a training regime in which he constantly pushed beyond what he previously thought his limits were.

“What I’ve unlocked is a darkness, being comfortable in an uncomfortable environment,” Taylor said.

While Taylor is looking to take a major step up in his burgeoning professional career with Scott, the basis of everything he is doing now is an echo of what shaped him at Bilborough Community Boxing Club in Nottingham where he first got in the ring.

There is a sign on the door of that gym that greets everyone that enters, which reads “if you’re not prepared to work hard, this isn’t the place for you”.

So it is little wonder why Taylor insisted the final preparations for his fight with Hutchinson – on the undercard of Moses Itauma’s heavyweight bout with Jermaine Franklin – were done there.

“For my spirit, this is what I need,” Taylor said.

“This is my foundation. It would only be right to come back here going into my biggest test on paper.”

Ezra Taylor’s trainer Malik Scott (right) won 38 of his 42 professional heavyweight bouts [Getty Images]

Both Taylor and his trainer Scott see Saturday’s bout as the fighter’s “coming out party” – an athlete ready to show the boxing world what he is capable of.

Since their first meeting, when Taylor laid out his bold career ambitions, Scott has been preparing for only one thing.

“Ezra is the first fighter I’ve ever heard in an initial meeting say ‘I want to be more than a world champion – I want to be the best in the world, that is my goal’,” Scott recalls.

“And not only did he tell me he wants to do that, but in the gym and outside the gym that is how he carries himself.

“That is something to respect and admire.

“So I don’t train Ezra like I want him to be a title holder, I train him like a fighter that wants to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world some day.”