Katie Taylor<\/a> began boxing, she sometimes entered junior contests as \u201cK Taylor\u201d, her hair tucked beneath her headguard so nobody would realise she was a girl.<\/p>\nNow aged 40, she is preparing to bow out from the sport in style in front of 80,000 fans at Dublin\u2019s Croke Park on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Unbeaten French challenger Flora Pili stands in the way of Taylor becoming undisputed world champion for a third time, with the Irishwoman\u2019s WBA, IBF and WBO super-lightweight titles on the line, along with the vacant WBC belt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure if there\u2019s any other country in the world where 80,000 people would turn up for a female athlete,\u201d Taylor said this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to put on a performance worthy of everyone\u2019s support over the years. This country has travelled around the world to watch me fight,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Taylor\u2019s storied career has taken her to some of the biggest venues around the globe.<\/p>\n
In 2022, she and Amanda Serrano became the first women to headline a boxing card at New York\u2019s Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
Taylor has also boxed at Wembley, Cardiff\u2019s Principality Stadium and the homes of the Dallas Cowboys and Boston Celtics.<\/p>\n
But she craved a return home and the first boxing show at Croke Park \u2013 the home of Irish Gaelic sports \u2013 since heavyweight great Muhammad Ali beat Al \u201cBlue\u201d Lewis there in 1972.<\/p>\n
Taylor, though, warned she cannot let the celebration surrounding her retirement affect her performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is too dangerous of a sport to have your body in the ring and your heart outside of it thinking about retirement,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Olympic breakthrough<\/p>\n
Taylor was just 15 when she contested Ireland\u2019s first officially sanctioned women\u2019s boxing match in 2001.<\/p>\n
As a girl, she wrote to Irish world champion Deirdre Gogarty about her difficulty in finding fights and later campaigned for women\u2019s boxing to be admitted to the Olympics.<\/p>\n
When women were finally allowed to compete at the London Games in 2012, she won lightweight gold.<\/p>\n
Although she fell short of another medal in Rio four years later, it did not dampen Taylor\u2019s rise to stardom after turning professional in 2016.<\/p>\n
She needed just seven fights to secure her first world title and later held all four major belts at lightweight before moving up to super-lightweight and achieving the same feat.<\/p>\n
Her professional record stands at 25 wins and one defeat.<\/p>\n
A fatal gangland shooting at a Dublin boxing weigh-in in the same year Taylor turned professional a decade ago was followed by a long absence of major professional boxing from Ireland.<\/p>\n
When Taylor finally fought in Dublin in May 2023, Chantelle Cameron spoiled the party by handing her the sole loss of her professional career.<\/p>\n
Taylor reversed the result six months later to claim Cameron\u2019s super-lightweight belts and has since retained them in two more bouts against Serrano in the United States.<\/p>\n
Her impact on the other side of the Atlantic was apparent at Wednesday\u2019s public workout where 10-year-old Clodagh Keating was invited into the ring and reduced to tears at meeting her heroine.<\/p>\n
Taylor said seeing boxing gyms now filled with girls was \u201cthe best part\u201d of her legacy.<\/p>\n
She expects the emotion to land after the punches stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a few days, I\u2019ll make my last ring walk,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll look back on this in a few years and I imagine I\u2019ll be overwhelmed\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unbeaten French challenger Flora Pili stands in the way of Taylor becoming undisputed world champion for a third…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,3456,23285,457,82],"class_list":["post-883958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-europe","tag-ireland","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}