THE BOXERS CAPABLE of selling 80-plus-thousand tickets, even in their home country, can be counted on one hand.
Four of them are male and three of them are heavyweights. Two of them — Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua — would probably require each other’s company to sell out Wembley at this juncture of their respective careers and, in any case, Fury would appear intent on taking their increasingly irrelevant prospective bout to New York to maximise his earnings.
Oleksandr Usyk, twice a conqueror of Fury and Joshua each, is currently unable to fight in Ukraine for obvious reasons. Super-middleweight Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, who arguably remains his sport’s most transcendent star, could still sell out most outdoor stadiums in his native Mexico or over the border in Texas.
That leaves only one.
Katie Taylor at Croke Park during the Leinster hurling final between Dublin and Galway. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
“We can be very proud as a nation because I’m not sure there is any other nation in the world where 80,000 people would turn up for a female athlete,” said Katie Taylor at Tuesday’s press conference, days shy of her sold-out farewell bout against Flora Pili at Croke Park.
Hers is a difficult hypothesis to disprove, because what Taylor has pulled off with tonight’s landmark event in Dublin has never before been achieved by an individual female athlete anywhere. Only a few women’s football World Cup finals and far cheaper US collegiate team events have it beaten for turnout. In truth, the speed with which she sold her tickets back in June would suggest that Taylor would rank even further up the all-time attendance rankings for women’s sport if Croke Park was simply a larger venue.
Bear in mind that it’s only four or five months since the idea was floated that Taylor be tacked onto a Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua fight at Croke Park in order to make feasible her farewell fight at her dream venue. Bear in mind, too, that when Taylor’s Croke Park swansong was finally confirmed in June, cameo appearances by major musical acts were among the gimmicks teased as a means of shipping tickets to the masses; in the end, Westlife and the Mary Wallopers were announced only this week and, with respect to each of them, their inclusion on the bill now feels obsolete.
“[People] did deflate my spirit a little bit over the years”, said promoter Eddie Hearn on Wednesday, “where it was like, they made me question whether we could do [Croke Park] or if it would actually work.
“And I’m disappointed in myself, actually, that I allowed that to happen, because maybe we could have done it earlier.
“If Croker would have originally gone, ‘Yes, this is going to be massive’, I would have gone, ‘Wow,’ and we would have done it,” Hearn added. “But it was like, ‘I don’t know…’ And it was like, ‘Well, blimey, if they’re not sure, do we really want to be gambling with these costs?’”
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Katie Taylor and Flora Pili face off at Croke Park. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
In the end, though, all stakeholders were left astounded as four years’ worth of unsubstantiated projections concocted by sceptical suits, talking heads, and non-boxing fans were disproved in about a combined quarter of an hour across a Wednesday pre-sale and Friday general sale.
Whereas typically, 55% of tickets for a major event in Dublin, such as a concert at Croke Park, are purchased within the capital itself, the equivalent figure for Taylor-Pili was just 35%; vindication, perhaps, for her nationwide promotional bus tour and umpteen accompanying appearances on local radio stations — or an indication, perhaps, of Taylor’s nationwide appeal in any case.
The light-welterweight champion was herself left dumbfounded by the demand for tickets. Serenaded at every turn by her own people, Taylor has seemingly spent the majority of her media engagements this week fighting back tears, and she’s down big on the scorecards.
That tonight’s undisputed clash against Frenchwoman Pili is a real fight, and not a testimonial, was accentuated by the decision of her team to twice cancel short roundtables with the written media midweek; they clearly felt Taylor’s TV and in-house interviews on Tuesday had brought with them enough emotional expenditure and, even on a very basic anatomical level, crying is tiring.
Taylor’s first-ever pro fight in Dublin and, by extension, its unprecedented media demands, is surely considered a cautionary tale internally: Taylor, albeit also encumbered by her longstanding calf injury, appeared drained in the early rounds against Chantelle Cameron at the 3Arena and suffered the first loss of her professional career. She gloriously avenged that defeat six months later after a fight week in which she was given fewer media obligations than ever before.
Katie Taylor avenged her sole career loss to Chantelle Cameron in November 2023. Matchroom Boxing / Mark Ro/INPHO
Matchroom Boxing / Mark Ro/INPHO / Mark Ro/INPHO
But Taylor will surely heed warning, too, from the last fight night on which she openly wept. Hers were tears of joy, mind.
In November 2019, one fight after she went life and death to contentiously edge Delfine Persoon in their undisputed lightweight showdown in New York, Taylor soundly defeated Christina Linardatou in Manchester to become a two-weight world champion, relieving the tough Greek of her WBO title at 140 pounds.
During her post-fight interview with Sky Sports, Taylor was endorsed with such hair-raising adulation by the Manchester Arena crowd that she wound up in floods at centre-ring. While her stock was clearly rising in Britain, the few Irish journalists at ringside couldn’t help but lament the likelihood that Taylor would never experience such a profound moment back home, where the boxing scene was so contaminated by Daniel Kinahan and his MTK Global management company that the concept was deemed unfeasible.
Croke Park wasn’t so much as a pipedream.
Katie Taylor defeated Christina Linardatou on an emotional night in Manchester in 2019. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
Equally noteworthy from that night in Manchester, though, is that Taylor was boxing in the chief-support slot to Manchester’s retiring hero, former lightweight world champion Anthony Crolla, who headlined in what had already been announced as his final-ever fight.
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While Crolla was awarded his desired outcome by clearly ‘sentimental’ British judges on that occasion, anybody else who watched the fight saw him lose to unheralded Spaniard Frank Urquiaga. And while it matters seven years later only to the scorned Urquiaga, it was a distasteful way for a fighter of Crolla’s dignity to bow out, through no fault of his own.
If tonight’s fight were to play out similarly, however unlikely, one would hope that Flora Pili would get to enjoy her own deserved fairytale.
For a boxer to announce an upcoming fight as their last is certainly a perilous thing. The brain might begin to wander. The body might wish to wander less. Even if there are no silk pyjamas in the wardrobe, normal PJs begin to feel very comfy.
As her final bell nears, Katie Taylor has had no option but to reflect on 30 years in the boxing ring this week. She has equally corrected course on several occasions, stressing that her focus has been, and will remain, on the bout at hand with Pili.
Katie Taylor meets young fan Leanne at Friday's weigh-in. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
It may transpire to help her and not hinder Taylor, though, that this isn’t actually ‘just business’; it’s not ‘just another fight’. Croke Park is instead the only box left unchecked, the crowning glory, the only remaining thread with which she can burnish the sprawling tapestry of her career.
She has walked to the ring in massive stadiums before, but never the one on Jones’ Road, never before in front of 80-odd-thousand people who have parted with their hard-earned money to celebrate her.
That thought will have kept her awake on several nights over the last three months, but it will also have gotten her out of bed on plenty of difficult mornings.
Flora Pili might be playing with house money but Taylor will surely set the house rules once her heart rate settles shortly after 10pm.
Irrespective of the result, the inevitable tears can become the first opponent against whom she declines battle in retirement.
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Tearful night in 2019 can prove cautionary tale for Katie Taylor: boxing testimonials are rarely a good idea
THE BOXERS CAPABLE of selling 80-plus-thousand tickets, even in their home country, can be counted on one hand.
Four of them are male and three of them are heavyweights. Two of them — Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua — would probably require each other’s company to sell out Wembley at this juncture of their respective careers and, in any case, Fury would appear intent on taking their increasingly irrelevant prospective bout to New York to maximise his earnings.
Oleksandr Usyk, twice a conqueror of Fury and Joshua each, is currently unable to fight in Ukraine for obvious reasons. Super-middleweight Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, who arguably remains his sport’s most transcendent star, could still sell out most outdoor stadiums in his native Mexico or over the border in Texas.
That leaves only one.
“We can be very proud as a nation because I’m not sure there is any other nation in the world where 80,000 people would turn up for a female athlete,” said Katie Taylor at Tuesday’s press conference, days shy of her sold-out farewell bout against Flora Pili at Croke Park.
Hers is a difficult hypothesis to disprove, because what Taylor has pulled off with tonight’s landmark event in Dublin has never before been achieved by an individual female athlete anywhere. Only a few women’s football World Cup finals and far cheaper US collegiate team events have it beaten for turnout. In truth, the speed with which she sold her tickets back in June would suggest that Taylor would rank even further up the all-time attendance rankings for women’s sport if Croke Park was simply a larger venue.
Bear in mind that it’s only four or five months since the idea was floated that Taylor be tacked onto a Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua fight at Croke Park in order to make feasible her farewell fight at her dream venue. Bear in mind, too, that when Taylor’s Croke Park swansong was finally confirmed in June, cameo appearances by major musical acts were among the gimmicks teased as a means of shipping tickets to the masses; in the end, Westlife and the Mary Wallopers were announced only this week and, with respect to each of them, their inclusion on the bill now feels obsolete.
“[People] did deflate my spirit a little bit over the years”, said promoter Eddie Hearn on Wednesday, “where it was like, they made me question whether we could do [Croke Park] or if it would actually work.
“And I’m disappointed in myself, actually, that I allowed that to happen, because maybe we could have done it earlier.
“If Croker would have originally gone, ‘Yes, this is going to be massive’, I would have gone, ‘Wow,’ and we would have done it,” Hearn added. “But it was like, ‘I don’t know…’ And it was like, ‘Well, blimey, if they’re not sure, do we really want to be gambling with these costs?’”
In the end, though, all stakeholders were left astounded as four years’ worth of unsubstantiated projections concocted by sceptical suits, talking heads, and non-boxing fans were disproved in about a combined quarter of an hour across a Wednesday pre-sale and Friday general sale.
Whereas typically, 55% of tickets for a major event in Dublin, such as a concert at Croke Park, are purchased within the capital itself, the equivalent figure for Taylor-Pili was just 35%; vindication, perhaps, for her nationwide promotional bus tour and umpteen accompanying appearances on local radio stations — or an indication, perhaps, of Taylor’s nationwide appeal in any case.
The light-welterweight champion was herself left dumbfounded by the demand for tickets. Serenaded at every turn by her own people, Taylor has seemingly spent the majority of her media engagements this week fighting back tears, and she’s down big on the scorecards.
That tonight’s undisputed clash against Frenchwoman Pili is a real fight, and not a testimonial, was accentuated by the decision of her team to twice cancel short roundtables with the written media midweek; they clearly felt Taylor’s TV and in-house interviews on Tuesday had brought with them enough emotional expenditure and, even on a very basic anatomical level, crying is tiring.
Taylor’s first-ever pro fight in Dublin and, by extension, its unprecedented media demands, is surely considered a cautionary tale internally: Taylor, albeit also encumbered by her longstanding calf injury, appeared drained in the early rounds against Chantelle Cameron at the 3Arena and suffered the first loss of her professional career. She gloriously avenged that defeat six months later after a fight week in which she was given fewer media obligations than ever before.
But Taylor will surely heed warning, too, from the last fight night on which she openly wept. Hers were tears of joy, mind.
In November 2019, one fight after she went life and death to contentiously edge Delfine Persoon in their undisputed lightweight showdown in New York, Taylor soundly defeated Christina Linardatou in Manchester to become a two-weight world champion, relieving the tough Greek of her WBO title at 140 pounds.
During her post-fight interview with Sky Sports, Taylor was endorsed with such hair-raising adulation by the Manchester Arena crowd that she wound up in floods at centre-ring. While her stock was clearly rising in Britain, the few Irish journalists at ringside couldn’t help but lament the likelihood that Taylor would never experience such a profound moment back home, where the boxing scene was so contaminated by Daniel Kinahan and his MTK Global management company that the concept was deemed unfeasible.
Croke Park wasn’t so much as a pipedream.
Equally noteworthy from that night in Manchester, though, is that Taylor was boxing in the chief-support slot to Manchester’s retiring hero, former lightweight world champion Anthony Crolla, who headlined in what had already been announced as his final-ever fight.
While Crolla was awarded his desired outcome by clearly ‘sentimental’ British judges on that occasion, anybody else who watched the fight saw him lose to unheralded Spaniard Frank Urquiaga. And while it matters seven years later only to the scorned Urquiaga, it was a distasteful way for a fighter of Crolla’s dignity to bow out, through no fault of his own.
If tonight’s fight were to play out similarly, however unlikely, one would hope that Flora Pili would get to enjoy her own deserved fairytale.
For a boxer to announce an upcoming fight as their last is certainly a perilous thing. The brain might begin to wander. The body might wish to wander less. Even if there are no silk pyjamas in the wardrobe, normal PJs begin to feel very comfy.
As her final bell nears, Katie Taylor has had no option but to reflect on 30 years in the boxing ring this week. She has equally corrected course on several occasions, stressing that her focus has been, and will remain, on the bout at hand with Pili.
It may transpire to help her and not hinder Taylor, though, that this isn’t actually ‘just business’; it’s not ‘just another fight’. Croke Park is instead the only box left unchecked, the crowning glory, the only remaining thread with which she can burnish the sprawling tapestry of her career.
She has walked to the ring in massive stadiums before, but never the one on Jones’ Road, never before in front of 80-odd-thousand people who have parted with their hard-earned money to celebrate her.
That thought will have kept her awake on several nights over the last three months, but it will also have gotten her out of bed on plenty of difficult mornings.
Flora Pili might be playing with house money but Taylor will surely set the house rules once her heart rate settles shortly after 10pm.
Irrespective of the result, the inevitable tears can become the first opponent against whom she declines battle in retirement.
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all's well that enswell Boxing Farewell?