THERE ARE DIFFERENT shades of home.
Katie Taylor has virtually everything she needs in Vernon, Connecticut, for it to feel homely at this point.
One of Taylor’s first ports of call when she linked up with her trainer, Ross Enamait, in the autumn of 2016, was to find a church that she would be able to attend while training with him. Through regular visits, Taylor has made friends — but crucially, she can still enjoy a kind of anonymity in the Connecticut hills that she craved for years in Ireland.
She bought her first house in Vernon four years ago. She had a high-calibre boxing gym built into the basement where she can tick over between fights. When it’s time to get down to business ahead of her latest title bout, she trains predominantly out of Enamait’s nearby premises.
Taylor, who lives near the Connecticut River, even owns a speedboat, one of her few luxury purchases during a professional career which has seen her become one of the highest earning female athletes on the planet. Her boat affords her the chance to escape even further into the wilderness; albeit, upon her initial purchase, she had to bring friends with her onto the water as she didn’t know how to moor it on her own.
Still, for the seven years of which she has spent the majority on America’s East Coast, Taylor has longed for a professional bout in Ireland more than anything. Next week, she’ll finally get her wish. Katie Taylor is coming home-home.
…Well, pretty much, anyway.
“We’re going to be based in Dublin for fight week… I think everybody knows where I live in Bray”, Taylor laughs, “so I think it’d be more chaotic and hectic. So, we have somewhere in Dublin that I’m staying in for the week. I’m just looking forward to it.”
Rest assured, when the dust settles on the 3Arena canvas next Saturday night, there will follow a couple of weeks’ downtime back in Bray. It still boasts what Vernon can’t: parents, siblings, and day-one friends, as well as Taylor’s beloved grandmother, nieces, and nephews that tend to adorn her Instagram stories as the war scars heal.
And no matter the result next weekend, there will be bumps, bruises, blood and swelling, for the 37-year-old boxing great is taking on her greatest challenge in the shape of Chantelle Cameron.
Not only is the Northampton woman a harder-hitting, unbeaten, younger fighter at 31, but Cameron is the undisputed champion a division above Taylor at light-welterweight.
Even when she’s out of office, Taylor walks around only a pound or two north of the 140lb light-welter limit, whereas after Friday’s weigh-in Cameron will rehydrate to a significantly larger size as is every boxer’s right. But Taylor knew all of this when she uncharacteristically called out Cameron in a bid to save her Dublin homecoming after Amanda Serrano’s withdrawal.
“Things have been pretty much the same for me,” she shrugs. “I think it has probably been psychologically beneficial because I don’t have to worry about actually making weight. I can eat what I want and just focus on the actual fight.
“I feel very, very comfortable at this weight and very strong as well,” adds Taylor, who did once hold a belt up at 140 when she eased past Christina Linardatou in Manchester in November 2019.
“I don’t think there’s much of a difference between the lightweight division and the light-welterweight division. She’s probably a bit bigger than me but not too much.
“I wouldn’t say I fear anything about her but I’m obviously aware of the challenge ahead of me.
She has a big engine and I’m prepared for that. She’s big and strong, I’m prepared for that as well. But I also have a big engine, I’m also strong. I’m going in there ready for, I feel like, anything that comes my way on fight night.
Business as usual, so. But can it really be?
We are, after all, talking 9,000 fans in Dublin, and a night for which Taylor has wished and waited since turning professional in 2016.
Serrano at a sold-out Madison Square Garden was bigger, obviously, at least infrastructurally. But probably only ahead of her Olympic final in London 11 years ago did Taylor carry such a weight of expectation from the Irish population into an almost fated occasion.
And Taylor acknowledges that there does exist “a bit of added pressure this time around, in front of the home crowd”. But only a bit.
“I have the experience of fighting in these big occasions when there’s a lot of pressure on my shoulders”, she adds, “so every time I step into the ring, I feel like there’s no pressure on me.
“I’m just getting on with things. This is a huge occasion for me and I’m just delighted; delighted to actually get a chance to fight at home. A few years ago, I didn’t think this was going to happen so I’m just so delighted, so proud.
“Fight week is always a busy week, anyway. But I just take things in my stride, just take it day by day and don’t get over-awed by it.
“I don’t feel like this fight is a burden to me, pressure-wise. What’s going outside… I have my focus and it’s actually on the fight.
I’m just so excited about this because this could be the biggest moment of my career so far: having a chance to become a two-weight undisputed champion in front of my home crowd, in front of the people who have supported me for years and years.
As for a Dublin ring-walk seven years in the making, Taylor smiles: “I haven’t even decided what song I’m going to come out to!”
“I’m pretty low-key with stuff like that.”
Maniac 2000, then?
“Yeah, yeah,” Taylor laughs.
Funky yeah, one might argue.
“That’d be absolutely iconic, alright”, she nods, “but… it might be a bit much!”
Something might catch her ear on the flight from Boston to Dublin this weekend as Katie Taylor eyes up another extension to her boxing greatness.
