As promoter Eddie Hearn tries to quantify the impact Katie Taylor has made throughout her career, there is a smile and shake of the head as he says, “the whole story, you couldn’t make it up.”
On Saturday night, Taylor will make her final walk to the ring when she takes on Flora Pili at Croke Park, with the chance to become undisputed light-welterweight champion once again.
While Taylor entered professional boxing in 2016 with an Olympic gold medal, five world and seven European amateur titles to her name, there were no guarantees that star power could flourish in the paid code where women’s boxing remained firmly in the shadows.
After agreeing to meet Taylor, her mother Bridget and manager Brian Peters, Hearn’s interest was more than piqued.
“I went into that meeting, I would say 90% in my mind I wasn’t going to do anything,” said the Matchroom chairman.
“She’s so fierce and the way she was talking, like the passion, the determination and she was telling me the story about the Olympics [pushing for women’s boxing to be added to the programme for London 2012] and I was just like, ‘this is unbelievable’. That was when we decided to headline her in November.”
The decision to put Taylor on after Ohara Davies’ victory over Andrea Scarpa that night at Wembley Arena was met with some scepticism from his father, Barry.
“He’s like, ‘oh, mate, no one’s interested in the women’s boxing’ but he watched her debut and he was like, ‘oh my God’.
“From there, the story’s been unbelievable.”