Katie has nothing more to prove – she should quit on a high
IWAS on the panel for the Brendan O’Connor Show on Sunday when the subject of Katie Taylor’s victory in Madison Square Garden came up. It was a genuinely historic event, being the first time women’s boxing topped the bill in that legendary setting and all the more noteworthy because the woman who made that happen and put women’s boxing on the map is Katie Taylor.
A sports reporter who’d watched the bout gave a graphic description of the twists and turns that made the fight so exciting to watch.
In round five, he said, the Irishwoman seemed to be in serious difficulty. Blood was pouring down her face, she appeared disoriented and if the round had gone on for another minute – at two minutes long, women’s rounds are shorter than men’s – the fight would almost certainly have been stopped.
Honest
I’m afraid that image, of a woman with blood pouring from head wounds after a vicious battering, was still in my mind when Brendan asked for a response to Katie’s win. Mine was an honest one: it’s possible to admire Katie Taylor, and the extraordinary achievements wrought by passion, determination and hard work, while still recoiling from the thought of a human being, male or female, pummelled into near-insensibility and bleeding heavily in the name of sport.
I don’t know if any listeners agreed with me, but I didn’t get much support at home later.
My daughters, late teens and early 20s, care little about her sport but are big fans of Katie’s. She’s a proper female role model, they reckon, she’s shown that women can be ‘badasses’, whatever that might be, she’s proved they can do anything a man can do, and better, and she can do it without the arrogance and bombast of a Conor McGregor.
And I get all that. She set her heart on a goal that would have been an impossibility when she started out. She’s turned women’s boxing into a worldwide phenomenon, from the position of a niche pursuit 20 years ago, and she packed out Madison Square Garden with her star power. She also earned a million dollars in the process. She’s an Olympic gold medallist and undefeated world champion and still manages to stay grounded and humble about her successes: what’s not to admire about her?
As for boxing, that’s a different matter. I know its proponents describe it as ‘chess with muscles’, and insist it’s about outwitting your opponent, anticipating their next move and scoring points with clever moves.
But it’s a rare chess game that can leave its participants bloodied and concussed. Last December, Katie’s defeated opponent, Amanda Serrano beat contender
Miriam Gutierrez in ten rounds.
Serrano landed some 236 blows to Gutierrez’s face. She was unrecognisable. Her nose was clearly broken and flattened, her lips swollen and her eyes closed.
And men’s boxing, because of their superior strength, can inflict even greater damage.
Since their rounds are onethird longer than women’s, the number of blows to the face and head in the average male professional fight must run into several hundreds. Think about the impact of a single punch, at heavyweight level, on the brain as it is rattled about inside its bone casing. Now think about hundreds of punches.
The average age of Parkinson’s disease onset is 60. Muhammad Ali was 42 when he was diagnosed with the disease that robbed the world’s most famous boxer, celebrated as much for his wit and eloquence as his prowess in the ring, of his speech and mobility.
Again, the sport’s defenders insist Ali’s Parkinson’s was largely genetic but let’s be honest: all those thousands of blows to the head didn’t help.
Katie Taylor is 35. She has been boxing for 20 years. She has achieved more than anyone could have expected and nobody would fault her if she hung up her gloves now.
After the fight she said she’d like a few weeks of ‘not getting punched in the face’, wouldn’t a lifetime’s respite be better?
She will always be the biggest and most important name in women’s boxing, and win, lose or draw in a bruising rematch this summer, that won’t change. She has nothing more to prove, so shouldn’t this extraordinary young woman quit on a high.