Katie Taylor will fight Flora Pili at Croke Park on 5 September in the final bout of her career.<\/p>\n
It’ll be the first time that boxing has taken place at the GAA’s HQ since Muhammad Ali fought Alvin Lewis in July 1972.<\/p>\n
“We’ve actually brought boxing back to Croke Park,” Taylor said of her upcoming swansong.<\/p>\n
“This is going to be the most iconic moment of my whole career.<\/p>\n
“I have a chance to become a three-time undisputed champion, how amazing is that? The perfect way to end my career.”<\/p>\n
Pili is 12-0 and has two knockout wins in there. She previously held the European super lightweight title and won the vacant IBO crown in December.<\/p>\n
Promoter Eddie Hearn paid a glowing tribute to Katie Taylor.<\/p>\n
“Going through her career, from sending a DM saying she wanted to turn pro to those Serrano fights, the Cameron bouts, the journey has been incredible,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’ll be the biggest crowd in the history of female sport for an individual athlete, it’ll be one of the greatest sporting moments this country has ever seen. More important than that, it’ll be her moment.”<\/p>\n
The Department of Sport has said it hasn’t received any request for any funding support for the bout.<\/p>\n
The prospect of state support for the event had been mooted previously, with Minister for Sport Patrick O’Donovan saying in March that a promoter had been in contact with his department.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Minister O’Donovan today said: “While the Department is not part of any announcement regarding a fight, we would welcome a final fight for Katie Taylor in Croke Park as this great stadium would provide a fitting stage on which to mark the closing act of Katie’s incredible career.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Taylor will fight Flora Pili at Croke Park on 5 September in the final bout of her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-484679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}