Katie Taylor is preparing for a stern test from Flora Pili rather than a Croke Park testimonial on Saturday night as she seeks to sign off on her career in style.<\/p>\n
Over 54 years will have passed since Muhammad Ali headlined the last boxing event at the home of the Gaelic Athletic Association.<\/p>\n
Just as ‘The Greatest’ blazed a trail in a career that transcended sport, Taylor has done likewise.<\/p>\n
Elevating women’s boxing to heights never experienced or perhaps expected, the 40-year-old will make her final walk in front of 80,000 fans with the opportunity to become undisputed champion at light-welterweight once again.<\/p>\n
It is all set up for the glorious farewell, and while talk about ring-walks and musical entertainment is a feature of fight week in Dublin, Taylor is looking no further than her 29-year-old French opponent, who is perfect through 12 fights and holds the European and IBO belt.<\/p>\n
“I’m trying not to think about it as I have a job to do,” Taylor, whose record stands at 25-1, said at Tuesday’s news conference when the subject of the overall event was raised.<\/p>\n
“It’s too dangerous a sport to have your body in the ring and your heart out of it, thinking of retirement.<\/p>\n
“I have a job to do, and I’m very much focused on that job. The most important part of Saturday night is I get my hand raised, so it’s business as usual for me.<\/p>\n
“I’ve a live opponent in front of me, so it won’t be a walk in the park. She is here to win … a young, undefeated fighter. It will be a tough fight, but that’s when I’m at my best.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Taylor is preparing for a stern test from Flora Pili rather than a Croke Park testimonial on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-876898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}