For Josh Taylor, it was Viktol Postol. For Carl Frampton, it was Kiko Martinez, and for Adam Azim, it may well be Sergey Lipinets.
Proven, ambitious opponents a promising, young fighter was matched with to test whether they were truly capable of realising their potential. Opponents who presented a calculated risk, but who promised – eventually, not immediately – rich rewards. Potentially defining gauges of progress, ahead of the hoped-for-even-more-defining tests to follow.
Aggressively matching their finest fighters has long been favoured by the experienced McGuigans, the manager Barry and the trainer, his son Shane. Taylor, and Frampton, regardless of the reality that their separations from the McGuigans became so bitter, remain the finest fighters that they have guided. The WBC lightweight champion Caroline Dubois is already on course to earn parity with and to perhaps even surpass Taylor and Frampton, and it is little secret that the McGuigans are hoping that Azim, the 22-year-old junior welterweight, will do the same.
On Saturday at London’s Wembley Arena, against the 35-year-old former IBF junior-welterweight champion and one-time opponent of, among others, Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Mikey Garcia, Azim, similarly to Taylor and Frampton before him, will either record his finest victory or a particularly unsettling defeat. He will also do so one week after his leading domestic rival, Dalton Smith, won the European title once held by Azim by stopping France’s Walid Ouizza inside a round – and while perhaps even aware of how ruthless the McGuigans are capable of being when they realise that one of their fighters isn’t going to truly succeed.
“I have private conversations with Shane,” Azim told BoxingScene. “Me and him have a really good connection so we always have a great time and yeah we’ve had that chat, me and him, and he always tells me about how he did it this way and that way. This particular fight I’m having now, he’s put some really tough sparring in and I’ve been performing well in sparring.
“It is a similar way [to Taylor and Frampton] they are doing it and each time they both have been aggressively matched they performed in there, so and I want to do the same thing. I want to put on a great performance against Sergey – hopefully get that knockout victory.
“The benefits for myself is improving as a fighter, and the way I’m getting matched they know that I’m capable of winning. So I know that for sure that the way I’m going at the moment is, you know, in the world honours.
“He’s been with elite fighters – Jaron ‘Boots’, Mikey Garcia. He’s fought Lamont Peterson. He’s been with some good fighters and, obviously, Jaron Boots is a great fighter. A very, very good fighter but I want to be like Jaron Boots myself. I want to be like him and hopefully better. That’s my ambition.
“I took [the fight] with both hands. Shane and myself and the team – we both took it with both hands and we knew that that would be a great opponent for me and puts me up there in the world stage.”
It is perhaps not only for Azim and the McGuigans that on Saturday much is at stake. The focus of Azim’s promoter Boxxer, and broadcaster Sky Sports, has largely been on grooming some of Britain’s finest young or developing fighters, but the career of Ben Whittaker is threatening to stall, Frazer Clarke has recorded his first defeat and his career will have to be carefully rebuilt, and in February Joshua Buatsi risks his undefeated record against Callum Smith. In short, if the patient business plan of Boxxer and Sky Sports is to deliver, Azim is among those they increasingly need to succeed.
In the same way that Lipinets was identified as a suitable opponent on account of his aggression and experience, Ohara Davies, the opponent Azim stopped in October, was chosen as his opponent not only because of his abilities as a fighter, but because of the nature that demanded he attempted to get under Azim’s skin.
“Me and [Shane] had some great talks before the fight – I’ve been properly prepared before the interview even happened and the press conference, and I know how to handle a situation now,” he said. “I’m maturing as a person and for myself being amongst good people around me, I now have to dictate and do well in interviews and the press.
“In and outside the ring I’m doing really well. I’m improving a lot in good ways and obviously I’ve had time where I developed around my gym mates as well, like Chris [Billam-Smith] and obviously got Barry coming into the gym all the time, so my development always comes from them as well, which is good.
“For this particular fight I’ve been going out, doing stuff like reading books and doing media training. It’s good for me – obviously I want to be a good, good boxer – I’m going to be a great boxer, but I also want to be a good full-stop.
“‘AJ’ [Anthony Joshua] – he even himself said that he had to do stuff out of his comfort zone and he’s gone and read books and other boxers have done that as well, so I thought that for myself would be good.”
Signs of Azim’s evolution can be seen in the conviction with which, at the top table of Thursday’s press conference in London, he not only predicted victory while alongside his composed opponent but confidently acknowledged the appearance, on Saturday’s undercard, of his brother Hassan.
He has also, similarly, been repeatedly critical of Ouizza as Smith’s opponent – if Azim succeeds against Lipinets, he will have earned a victory to rival Smith defeating Jose Zepeda – but on the eve of fighting Lipinets it is not comparisons with Smith he is considering, but those with Ennis and Garcia.
“That’s the aim of this fight,” he said. “I want to win it convincingly and hopefully get a knockout win and put a statement on – the only person who stopped him early was Boots.
“Boots is a great, great fighter – I think it’s a great division out there – he’s the best welterweight in the world but he’s got the fights out there that he can make like with [Terence] Crawford and Virgil Ortiz [at junior middleweight].
“It’d be massive [to beat him similarly impressively] and it’d be good to get my name pushed out into the American scene, as Sergey is from America [Lipinets is from Kazakhstan, but trains out of Los Angeles] as well.
“It’s a huge step up and he’s a former IBF world champion and if I beat him and put a great statement on him then obviously it shows I’m an elite fighter and it shows I’m a world-class fighter.
“He has very heavy feet – his movement’s not the greatest. He comes at you in straight lines. [But] he’s a great fighter – I do respect him – and he’s been among world-class fighters and he’s a very good fighter, but I’m gonna have to put him into retirement after this fight.”
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