Bob Arum was right… Jack Catterall’s revenge win over Josh Taylor was much closer than the scorecards suggested as debate over quality of judging rages on

Bob Arum had a point. Josh Taylor didn’t get enough of it.

Whoever you thought won Saturday night’s rematch – and the majority believe Jack Catterall deserves his revenge – it was an exciting battle.

Much closer than the gaping margins on the official judges’ unanimous cards.

Arum, the legendary American promoter of Scotland’s Taylor, was in the minority when he claimed his man had won. But his rant about the margins of Catterall’s victory was justified.

Two cards of 117-111 were, as Arum put it, “Absolutely ridiculous.” The third, at 116-113, was closer to the target but still far from reality.

But their match in Leeds on Saturday evening was closer than the judges’ cards suggested

Taylor’s promoter Bob Arum was furious at the margin of victory given to Cattrall

Watching through the fisheye lens of the television is not the ideal way to score a fight and certainly wouldn’t provoke a fight here if Catterall had been declared the winner by a margin of one or two points.

I’m also not a fan of the automated method of counting punches landed, which left Taylor narrowly ahead at the end.

Sometimes one or two punches in combination can be too fast for the eye and the finger pressing the buttons.

The controversy surrounding this lively fight is not as raging as it was after their first meeting, when Taylor emerged on the right side of a split decision despite howls of protest despite being knocked down.

Yet this once again brings the quality of judging into the boxing debate.

Arum declared: “I will never bring an American fighter to Britain again after this.” His implication was that Catterall was benefiting from the judging at home in Leeds.

Actually, there was a hint of a different kind of influence this weekend. One reminiscent of the two fights against Evander Holyfield, which ended with Lennox Lewis becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

Catterall’s record stands at 29-1 and there will now be calls for a decisive third meeting between the pair

This fight had no belts on the line and was postponed twice due to Taylor’s foot injury

When Holyfield escaped with a draw from their first fight, which most observers thought Lewis had won comfortably, the furor grew from Maidson Square Garden for a US Senate inquiry into the state of boxing.

As they continued on to Las Vegas for the rematch, Holyfield astutely noted, “After what happened in New York, I’m going to have to take out Lennox to get the win here.”

Sure enough, the judges felt obliged to vote for Lewis, even though Holyfield seemed to have done enough to win on points.

If history has repeated itself, it is to Taylor’s detriment. The Prestonpans man did not endear himself to the crowd when he insisted he deserved the original decision in Glasgow. Not this weekend either, although he was less sanguine about that claim in Leeds.

Yet he is denied the respect his career deserves. It seems to have been forgotten that when Taylor first burst onto the scene he was anointed by Ken Buchanan as the heir apparent of Scottish boxing.

A prophecy he fulfilled as the only Scot to match the great man’s feat of becoming an undisputed world champion.

He did this as the first British fighter to go undisputed in the four-belt era and only the fifth in the world in any division, after Bernard Hopkins, Jermaine Taylor, Terence Crawford and Oleksandr Usyk.

At 33 years old, the Tartan Tornado may have hit a strong tailwind in his first two losses, to Teofimo Lopez and now Jack Catterall, but those two still have a long way to go if they want to match Josh Taylor’s achievements.

Including victories over a string of truly elite boxers during his reign as king of the light welterweights.