THE incredible rise and progress of Josh Taylor provides legitimate hope among boxing fans north of the border that at long last the curse of Ken Buchanan is on the way to being broken.

It is a curse that has hung like an incubus over every young Scottish prospect operating in the lower divisions in and around lightweight. At a certain point he finds himself drawing comparison with not only the greatest fighter Scotland has every produced but one of the greatest lightweights in the history of the sport, only for his career to flounder and him failing to match initial expectations.

Yet if Taylor, inarguably the most fitting of all who’ve borne the burden of Buchanan’s legacy since the latter hung up the gloves in the early 1980s, has felt any kind of pressure in this regard, it has been strikingly absent in his performances.