Katie Taylor is Ireland's greatest ever, and it's not even close
She have been overshadowed by the main event, but Katie Taylor's victory in her rematch with Amanda Serrano cemented her status as Ireland's greatest-ever athlete - how much longer can she last?
Seldom do rematches ever live up to their promise, and when the posters feature three boxers and a YouTuber the portents are hardly good, but Katie Taylor has never stood on ceremony - when you started your career covering up your long hair so that the ref and judges would think you were a boy, you’re used to a bit of theatrics.
Given that Taylor is now 38 it’s a fight that many felt they didn’t want to see, and yet they couldn’t take their eyes off it once the bell rang. The initial offering, in Madison Square Garden two years ago, was a bout for the ages that ended in a split-decision win for Taylor - two years on, her unbeaten record blitzed by Chantelle Cameron, Taylor is nearing the end, but she is not going quietly.
As fans and journalists, we have had the privilege of following Katie’s career up close, and Friday’s showdown in Dallas showed us a new, shrewder, more savage side to her that we suspected existed, but we were never really sure.
With both combatants dressed in black, gone was the humble devout Christian just happy to be in the spotlight to showcase her talent and the potential of the women’s sport - shades of it were there, but this time she did not wait until her back was against the ropes, trying to conjure a miracle from her gloves.
This time, War Katie appeared in the early rounds, and she stayed until the end to collect what was coming to her.
The beauty of the sport of boxing is the infinity of options housed within its six basic punches. It is in essence the simplest of sports, and yet it takes a lifetime to master, which is what made the main event so distasteful as a clout-chasing Jake-come-lately tried to leech of the aura of one of the most fearsome men ever to enter the ring.
I promised I wouldn’t let myself get side-tracked by that circus, but I cannot let it go by unremarked, so here it is:
No matter how deep his pockets, Jake Paul has not paid his dues in boxing; he is the ultimate pick-me boy, using his money and status to jump the queue and burnish his ego by rubbing shoulders with people whose company he is not fit to be in.
He is the kind of person real boxing people utterly despise, no matter what they say to his face - the finance or tech bro who makes his life-changing money young and thinks that, as a result, they know everything about everything and they “coulda been a contender”.
Nobody around such people ever says no to them, so they indulge their fantasy, no matter how ludicrous it gets - “Of COURSE you’re a great boxer, a mere four years after picking up the sport! Of COURSE you deserve to be the top of the bill! Of COURSE you can box Mike Tyson!”
Boxing people will take their money to train them and blow smoke up their pampered ass and tell them they’re great - it’s easy money - but once the gym door closes behind them, they either laugh at their fortune, or sigh with relief.
Jake Paul is an average boxer that barely landed a glove on a 58-year-old man who hadn’t fought a serious bout in decades, but whose footwork and head movement is still enough to let him hold his own against a young incompetent like Paul, despite being more than twice his age.
But if the Netflix subscribers tuned in early, they would have seen two boxers in Taylor and Serrano box at the absolute highest level for 10 two-minute rounds, and hopefully that will be what they take away from the night.
BUTTING HEADS
The cut sustained by Serrano in the fourth round arguably decided the fight, opening as it did a huge gash over the right eye of the challenger in what was judged an accidental clash of heads.
It also showed Taylor a dark path to victory, which she chose to take.
Clashes of heads happen all the time in boxing - some are head-butts, and some aren’t, and some are somewhere in between.
A deliberate head-butt in boxing is not the kind you’d see in a street fight, where one participant pulls their head back and launches it into the face of another; it can be a lot more subtle than that.
In Taylor’s case, the point she was eventually deducted for a deliberate head-butt was a long time coming, and by the time it arrived it was almost priced in to her strategy.
When boxing someone in the opposite stance, one way to manage the angles and distance is to lead with the head, pushing it out over the front foot and preventing an opponent from establishing their jabbing range. It is a legitimate tactic as old as boxing itself, and also very open to misuse.
Doing so makes the distance much harder to judge and maintain, increasing the likelihood that a clash of heads will occur - and because one party is leading with their head, they are usually the one that comes off the better of them.
Head-butts can be deliberate fouls, or they can be failures of care towards one’s opponent, or they can be in the grey zone of plausible deniability, where “I didn’t mean it” gives cover, at least for a while, until they mount up.
Either way, they are debilitating to whoever is on the receiving end, and such was the case for Serrano, who was undoubtedly weakened by them.
But that’s not to say she backed down. From the seventh round onwards, War Katie was in the ascendancy, and Serrano was with her all the way. The two fought as if doing so in a wardrobe with the door locked, squaring up to one another and firing off combinations, bobbing and weaving but barely attempting to pivot to safety.
It was also here that Serrano lost the fight; though she may have landed more shots, Taylor’s vast extensive amateur experience allowed her to land more clearly and more cleanly, gradually convincing the judges to score the fight in her favour.
The reception of the crowd was partisan and perhaps ill-informed; maybe those in attendance were more fans of YouTube than boxing, or perhaps they shared her Hispanic heritage, but they weren’t happy. Boos rained down from the stands, but they could not break through Taylor’s relief.
Taylor has now done it all, as an amateur and a pro - won gold and been robbed at the Olympics, become an undisputed champ, lost her unbeaten record only to win the rematch, and now she defended her crowns.
She has picked off fighters on points, she has knocked some out, she has given masterclasses in ring-craft, and she has dug deep and ground out wins when she had to, sailing close to the wind of what is within the rules, and sometimes straying into what is not.
To do so while earning millions on what will undoubtedly be a historic card (albeit not solely for boxing reasons) is a testament to her greatness, and Taylor’s longevity has made her Ireland’s greatest athlete by some margin.
While strong in rugby and occasionally competitive in soccer, no sport with an international dimension defines the Irish like boxing, and she is its undisputed pinnacle.
Taylor has already offered a rematch, and there is talk of 12 three-minutes rounds as one finally barrier to equality is torn down, but the longer she goes on, the more likely that the joyous chorus of her career will end on a minor chord.
As evidenced by Tyson, Father Time is undefeated (what a stain on the sport that his loss to a bluffer like Paul will be reflected on his professional record) and at 38 it’s not something Taylor has much left of.
That said, she has always charted her own course, at times single-handedly dragging the sport with her as she sought to climb the mountain. No-one can deny her another big-money outing should she so wish, no matter how much we might like to see her walk off into the sunset.
Katie Taylor used her head to win in Dallas, and she will do so again as she plots her next move - whatever happens, it will take something very special to dethrone her from her stature as Ireland’s undisputed and undeniable sporting queen for the ages.
10/10 as always Phil