{"id":624720,"date":"2026-06-06T17:15:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T17:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/624720\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T17:15:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T17:15:19","slug":"katie-taylor-how-iconic-irish-fighter-finally-secured-dream-croke-park-bout-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/624720\/","title":{"rendered":"Katie Taylor: How iconic Irish fighter finally secured dream Croke Park bout"},"content":{"rendered":"

Still, 80,000 seats is a lot to shift and in today’s environment, only the top heavyweights, plus a handful of other stars including Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Naoya Inoue can hit such heights.<\/p>\n

For Taylor, 39, and her team to have ambitions to command such an audience is evidence of the reverence in which she is held.<\/p>\n

After Friday’s news conference, the Bray native and team set off on a four-day promotional tour around the island of Ireland, beginning in her home town.<\/p>\n

It may be a farewell, but a test and not a testimonial is how Taylor wants to sign off. <\/p>\n

The opportunity to regain the WBC portion of the light-welterweight title [which was made vacant after last year’s Serrano win]<\/a> and retire undisputed is the dream.<\/p>\n

But she has no designs on getting swept up in the emotion with undefeated Frenchwoman Flora Pili standing in her way. <\/p>\n

The Croke Park door appeared shut when an agreement could not be reached between Hearn and stadium authorities three years ago, so what has changed?<\/p>\n

With costs to hire the stadium “twice as much as Wembley” according to the Matchroom chairman, it was difficult to see how the impasse would be broken.<\/p>\n

For the company there is “not a whole lot financially” to be gained, but just as the rematch between Carl Froch and George Groves at Wembley Stadium in 2014 proved a big night for Matchroom, 80,000 at Croke Park can do likewise according to Hearn.<\/p>\n

“That a female is fighting in front of 80,000 people, I think it’s the greatest moment of our [Matchroom’s] boxing history,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’re not going to be making much money on the night, but this is about more than that. My dad [Barry, Matchroom founder and president] might kill me, but what does it really matter what we make on a night like this?<\/p>\n

“What we leave with is something we’ll never forget and also it’s important for the brand of our business.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Still, 80,000 seats is a lot to shift and in today’s environment, only the top heavyweights, plus a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-624720","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\/624720","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=624720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}