KATIE Taylor will fight one last time, at Croke Park on September 5, headlining an event that will generate €12m in ticket sales and net the GAA circa €1m in the process. The hullabaloo, the overdrive, the Barnum & Bailey, the sales pitch will be even bigger. The menu, er sorry, the opposing fighter will be French; namely 28-year-old Flora Pili and it will be, according to promoter Eddie Hearn, the biggest attendance in history in terms of female sport. Tickets will go on pre-sale
next Wednesday, with general sale next Friday, for what he promises will be an early-evening event. There will be, Hearns says, special “value packages” for Irish fans supporting what will be Taylor’s last fight. There will be no avoiding the build-up either, as there are mighty posters about to bedeck the city and the internet, headlined “Once Upon a Time. ” with pictures of the fighters facing off. Indeed, once upon a time there was a time when Katie Taylor had to put her hair
in a pony-tail to get into the gym and spar with, er, boys. Just as there was no women’s boxing in the Olympics until Joan of Arc – Bray style – led the charge, her moving into pro boxing has turned what was previously disregarded into a sport where Madison Square Garden is second home to the New York-beloved Taylor. Jeez. if Katie fights as well as Hearn is promoting, the fight will last 11 seconds, the first of the seconds to rush and bonk
Pili on the nose, the rest for the count. “The last fighter at Croke Park, the only fight ever held there, was Muhammad Ali in 1972 and Katie’s ring for this fight will be in the exact same spot as his was,” promised Hearn. “There won’t be a dry eye in the house, it will be a historic occasion – everybody will remember exactly where they were when Katie fights. It is going to be incredible.” They say around Romford way that the most dangerous
thing to do in Eddie’s neighbourhood is to attend a garage sale at his house – gawd knows what you might bring home once exposed to the patter! Ireland’s golden girl Katie is a lot softer spoken (then again Foghorn Leghorn is often softer-spoken than EH) but her delivery is striking when she gets a chance to speak. She reaches out and cups her hand over the top off the microphone base and half-leans her elbow into it. This is, by the way, the trademark
Ian Dury grip, blatantly copied by Johnny Rotten during his Sex Pistols days – speak softly so, but look like you have the biggest stick! “Croke Park is the cathedral of Irish sport,” she begins, putting a better spin on the venue than the previous speaker who claimed, no doubt for the DAZN audience watching, that if you cut an Irish person they “bled GAA. ” SAGA “I wanted this so much, I’ve wanted this to be a legacy fight, I felt I couldn’t retire
with this one fight. “I don’t want it to be a walkover fight, I want it to be a fight to remember,” she added before the other Katie, the one we know in Ireland, stops to interrupt herself. “Well I do want it to be a sorta walkover fight, I’m fed up having to work all the time but I think you know what I mean. I want to inspire a generation of young girls and I want them to hear me when I tell
them ‘Nothing Is Impossible’. “It was always my dream to win an Olympic gold medal and they didn’t even have women’s boxing in the competition at that time. I want young girls to know nothing is impossible.” Apparently the fight, which had recently become an on/off saga – with Hearn at one point appearing to be looking for an Irish Government subsidy – really only took flight in the last six weeks. For this, Hearn paid particular credit to Peter McKenna’s belief that Croke Park
was the right venue for a Taylor farewell and the intervention of music promoter Peter Aiken. “I’ve never boxed,” Aiken told this paper. “My interest is in rugby, soccer, GAA and almost every other sport but I have brought Bruce Springsteen and Garth Brooks to Croke Park and I felt I could play a role here.” Mercifully, Katie Taylor will only be asked to perform for one night – Brooks was asked to perform five consecutive nights to get his cheque, Coldplay four, One Direction
three, Taylor Swift and Brucie two (2016). Now, while Hearn is promising a fabulous night of entertainment with far more than just boxing, Aiken says he doesn’t envisage a big musical act – so no Fontaines DC, or The Dropkick Murphys or Biird or Oasis. “The fact we only started putting this together six weeks ago militates against it. Actually I am not a fan of the American thing with music and sport. Look at The Killers at the Champions League final, there was a
15-minute half-time break and they took 18 minutes. They were in the way.” Perhaps Kellie Harrington, who lives in the shadow of Croker, will receive an invite – not to fight as she is an amateur, but to perform the ballad Grace, which she sings so well. And although Katie is willing to chat, pose for pix, shake hands here at Croke Park, she is hoping to get away because – as a former Ireland soccer international – she wants to see Ireland play Netherlands
on TV. “I am still a massive fan although the last of the girls I played with have retired of late. I am a big fan though of Katie McCabe, she is one of the best players in the world and would get into any team anywhere wouldn’t she? Katie was at my Wembley fight with Karen Carabajal and came backstage. If I could invite one person to my fight now it would be Katie McCabe, she’s brilliant!” Taylor, Harrington, McCabe, once a upon a
time they would never have had a chance – truly nothing is impossible. except, it seems, The Killers at Croke Park on Sept 5!
Katie Taylor, Croke Park, Flora Pili, Eddie Hearn, GAA, September 5, ticket sales, female sport, Irish boxing