KATIE TAYLOR ISN’T so much allergic to fight-week build-up as she is utterly void of emotion towards it.
There is a passive automation to how Taylor navigates the dozens of interviews, the soft handshakes, the constant gaze of the camera.
“I just can’t wait to step into the ring, now, at this stage,” she says, and you’d nearly be inclined to end the interview there.
“I take it day by day, I don’t even really think about these things anymore. I don’t even ask what I’m doing tomorrow, I just wake up and follow the team, basically.”
Come the Thursday before one of her fights, Taylor is often in the form to puncture the pomp that surrounds it.
On Tuesday she recorded a face-off with light-welterweight champion Cameron behind closed doors at the 3Arena, a means of generating photographs and online content for use throughout the week.
The photographs look fairly intense, both fighters carrying the belts that make up their respective undisputed titles and appearing to peer into each other’s souls.
That was the first of three scheduled face-offs before the boxers meet in the middle. It wasn’t exactly Taylor’s favourite part of her week at home so far.
“I think those things are nonsense to be quite honest,” she says. “People asked me afterwards: ‘What did you see in her eyes?’
“I didn’t see anything in her eyes,” Taylor laughs. “You never see anything in a person’s eyes when you’re facing off.”
Taylor is equally blunt when it’s put to her that Cameron and her trainer Jamie Moore have been attempting to create a narrative that the home fighter has enjoyed the benefit of the judges’ doubt on three occasions during her 22-fight professional career.
During a sit-down with journalists at Thursday’s press conference at Dublin Castle, the unbeaten Englishwoman said: “In all honesty, I’ve seen it three times with Katie. She has had very close fights and got the nod where it could’ve been a draw or easily gone the other way. That is a concern. But it is out of my hands and I can’t control that.
Cameron went on the speak of her need to make victory this Saturday “convincing” in order to avoid falling to the same fate as — presumably — Delfine Persoon (x2) and Amanda Serrano.
When her comments were put to Taylor, the home fighter scoffs: “What can I say about that, like?
“Who cares really? Every fight was well won, well deserved. It’s nonsense.”
Those around her will tell you that there are fights for which Taylor becomes especially locked in. Saturday’s challenge of Cameron is certainly one of them.
That it will take place in Dublin is something that she will only really be able to fully enjoy after the fact, said her trainer, Ross Enamait.
For now, it’s tunnel vision towards first bell, and the only face-off that really counts.
“I wouldn’t say anything’s been different,” Enamait says of Taylor’s preparation for a homecoming seven years in the making.
“I don’t really care where we fight. We just want to show up and put on a great performance and it doesn’t matter if it’s in Dublin or the middle of the desert.”
Cameron’s significant size advantage, too, is not of concern to the Vernon, Connecticut-based coach, who has been conditioning his fighter accordingly ahead of today’s weigh-in.
“We’ve had great sparring with bigger girls,” Enamait says. “We’ve been doing 15 rounds so I don’t really care what Chantelle Cameron weighs. It’s not a weight contest, it’s a boxing contest.
“It’s called boxing, it’s not called knockouts, we’re going to box.”
