{"id":622525,"date":"2026-06-05T11:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T11:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/622525\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T11:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T11:09:09","slug":"boxing-alanna-nihell-recalls-katie-taylors-historic-fight-ahead-of-dublin-swansong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/622525\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing: Alanna Nihell recalls Katie Taylor&#8217;s historic fight ahead of Dublin swansong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nihell, from Sandy Row in south Belfast, said that looking back now, her fight with Taylor in 2001 at Dublin&#8217;s National Stadium was an important milestone for women&#8217;s boxing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;On that day, the 15-year-old and 16-year-old girls didn&#8217;t realise how much of an impact that night would have in the future,&#8221; she told BBC News NI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was massive, it was the building block in the right direction for female boxers, especially in Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t allowed, there was no female boxing back then.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;For us to have the first sanctioned amateur [female] boxing fight in Ireland, it was huge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was just exciting because I was getting to actually fight a girl and it was the same for Katie. The standing ovation at the end we got was immense.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She added that Taylor&#8217;s range of boxing skills were impressive at a tender age.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Taylor later claimed five World Championship golds at amateur level from 2006 to 2014, as well as a gold medal at the 2012 Olympics in London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The County Wicklow boxer has held multiple world titles as a professional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nihell, from Sandy Row in south Belfast, said that looking back now, her fight with Taylor in 2001&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-622525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}