KATIE TAYLOR’S LONG-MOOTED homecoming fight in Dublin has been shelved indefinitely with the WBA World lightweight champion instead set to begin her bid to break America in April.
The42 understands Taylor will feature on Daniel Jacobs’ undercard on 28 April at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.
Cork middleweight Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan remains the frontrunner to face Brooklyn’s Jacobs following two career-best stoppage victories across the Atlantic in the latter half of 2017.
For Taylor, a unification fight is still the preferred option; IBF lightweight champion Victoria Bustos of Argentina remains, by a considerable margin, the most likely opponent for the Bray woman, while WBO champ Rose Volante of Brazil is being explored as a potential backup.
Recent MMA convert Heather ‘The Heat’ Hardy is in the conversation, too, but remains a wildcard option at this juncture.
The card will be broadcast on HBO in the States as well as Sky Sports in Ireland and the UK.
Eddie Hearn, who promotes Jacobs as well as Taylor, last week suggested to IFL TV that the 2012 Olympic champion’s eagerly anticipated Dublin homecoming would land on 14 April. However, the magnitude of upcoming opportunities across the pond has seen those plans change.
As previously reported by this publication, that hypothetical homecoming in the spring would likely have proven the only opportunity for Irish fans to experience Taylor fighting on home soil: such is her star potential, America has always been earmarked as the future base of operations, particularly since promoter Hearn opened an office there last autumn.
The process of formally introducing Taylor to the American audience will now begin one fight earlier than anticipated.
With Anthony Joshua destined to traverse the Atlantic in mid-2018 and a potential bout between Jacobs and the winner of a Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez rematch pending, lucrative nights on boxing’s major stage await for the great Irish champion.
Mega-bouts versus Puerto Rico’s five-weight world champion Amanda Serrano and UFC star Holly Holm are being explored as serious possibilities for late 2018.
Fighting in America was considered paramount to luring such big names into the ring for potentially career-defining scraps.
Taylor has previously fought there just once, when she stopped the unheralded Jasmine Clarkson at Barclays Center in July of last year.
