Boxing owes Katie a debt... and a last dance at Croker
WORLD UNDISPUTED LIGHTWEIGHT TITLE KATIE TAYLOR v KAREN ELIZABETH CARABAJAL
Saturday, Wembley Arena (DAZN)
IT’S hard to escape the sense that next Saturday at Wembley Arena will be after the Lord Mayor’s Show for Katie Taylor. Following the exhilarating high of headlining Madison Square Garden and producing a heroic performance worthy of that iconic stage, the undisputed lightweight queen returns to the nuts and bolts of being a boxing champion, putting her belts on the line against a mandatory, but unheralded, challenger.
Karen Elizabeth Carabajal is unbeaten in 19 professional bouts which, on the face of it, seems an impressive record. But she has never fought outside her native Argentina and facing Taylor represents an extraordinary leap in class from her usual opponent.
Even though she has been saying all the right things in the build-up, it is difficult to believe that Carabajal sees this as anything more than a chance to share the ring with one of the sport’s legends.
Taylor was enshrined in boxing folklore long before the bout for the ages against Amanda Serrano. However, the manner in which she had to dig deep against the Puerto Rican and come back from the brink of defeat only served to enhance her legendary status even further.
Within moments of the final bell, and before everyone started to breathe normally again, the appetite was whetted for a rematch.
Even Serrano and her promoter Jake Paul were swept up in the excitement. In the immediate aftermath, the pair were agreeable to coming to Dublin for a second act. Such was the momentum, that there was contact between Taylor’s team and Croke Park officials about the prospect of staging the bout at the home of the GAA. There was a nice bit of symmetry in that it would come half a century after Muhammad Ali fought Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at the Dublin 3 venue.
However, the initial enthusiasm from Serrano and Paul soon started to wane.
It took a long time for all parties to agree to a first bout and now it looks likely that, if there is to be a rematch, the negotiations will be even longer and more protracted second time around.
Such is Taylor’s appeal, there is a decent chance that she would sell out Croker irrespective of her opponent, but her team want Serrano. That is understandable as they want the narrative and storyline to turn the event into a spectacle. Even the huge MMA star Cris Cyborg wouldn’t create the same buzz, allowing for the appeal of having a crossover bout which has been long mooted.
So, Taylor and her team had to look elsewhere for an opponent. Matchroom are bringing her back to where she made her professional debut six years ago next weekend and there will be mileage in that. But after genuinely breaking barriers in New York last April, there is a mundanity to next Saturday’s outing.
However, Taylor’s trailblazing career has always been about more than her exceptional craft and skill inside the ring.
The Bray woman talks a lot about how important legacy is to her and of inspiring the next generation. And, in the past week, we have seen two clear examples of the legacy that Taylor will leave in her sport.
Shannon Sweeney was a young girl watching in Westport when Ireland stopped to see Taylor win gold at the London Olympics. This past week, the Mayo girl was one of seven boxers to win a medal at the European Championships in a recordbreaking performance for an Ireland team.
The medals in Montenegro are an obvious illustration of what she has done for the sport. It was Taylor’s talent, above all else, that convinced sceptical AIBA officials that women’s boxing deserved a place in the Olympics. What she did in London gave a generation of young girls like Sweeney a pathway into the sport.
It remains to be seen if boxing is still an Olympic sport after the Paris Games, given the current row between the International Olympic Committee and the International Boxing Association.
This country will suffer more than most if boxing is no longer an Olympic sport, with this rich seam of talent that produced the goods in Montenegro not able to reach the pinnacle of their sport.
Of course, Taylor has also dragged women’s professional boxing into the mainstream, as was clear last weekend when Claressa Shields displayed all the range of her remarkable skills in out-boxing Savannah Marshall. The undisputed middleweight title bout headlined a night of female boxing that drew a large viewership on Sky Sports. Taylor’s association with Sky Sports has ended; her title defence next weekend will be on DAZN, as was the classic fight with Serrano. But her shadow loomed over last Saturday. Without Taylor, none of what we have seen in the past week – from Shields v Marshall to the recordbreaking performance in Montenegro – would have been possible. Taylor turned 36 during the summer and in an interview with DAZN this week, she hinted for the first time that she is starting to have thoughts of retirement. The wish here and elsewhere is that she will get to have her last dance at Croker – against Serrano.