FIGHT WEEK BEGINS in earnest as Eric Donovan rises from his stool in Five Guys at Liffey Valley Shopping Centre to go and collect his kids.
Donovan, 37, bowed out of professional boxing in a blaze of glory last September and more recently trained the sensational Olympic hopeful Jude Gallagher to another Irish Elite title. He leaves a table of journalists-turned-friends in a manner that only a man of his credentials could: with a physical demonstration.
“Right, lads,” and Donovan begins throwing shapes, explaining how retaining composure even when she gets hit will be key to Katie Taylor’s success if she is to find any against Chantelle Cameron the second time around.
He admits he bought too far into Taylor’s aura of invincibility when previewing their original fight on Off the Ball back in April. He should have known better, he says: after all, he’s only a year Taylor’s senior at 38, and he felt his own reflexes begin to slow before he even turned professional at 30.
But Taylor still has a chance to scribble out the sole blemish on her pro-boxing CV this Saturday, Donovan reckons. It’s a 40-60 chance, but it’s far from inconceivable. Donovan stresses that point as he bounds for the door. And suddenly, you’re back to wondering.
It took Wednesday’s public workout in the middle of the main entrance into Liffey Valley before any sense of big-fight buzz to seep in — at least for this writer, anyway.
The build-up so far has been a fair bit quieter than Taylor-Cameron I back in May, though, hasn’t it? I’m certainly not alone in that hunch and that the 3Arena was far slower to sell out the second time around would indicate similar.
For a few weeks, I personally wondered if it was simply the case that it was tough — from an Irish perspective, at least — to become excited for a rematch which was born not of a controversial decision against Taylor the first time around but of a contractual stipulation.
Six months ago, Cameron took on one of the most daunting away trips in world boxing and bested Taylor on her own turf. It was a close fight which rendered a fair verdict (96-94 x2, 95-95 — the latter of which was generous to the home fighter).
At 32 and as the natural light-welterweight of the pair, Cameron had indeed been fresher, stronger, and slightly better, as a lot of people suspected she would be. There was no real cause to do it again, only that Taylor’s team had worked that exact right into her contract.
Couple that with the fact that, six months later, back up at 140 pounds and off the back of another humdinger, Taylor is on paper less likely to avenge her defeat than she was to win the first time.
Maybe there’s also an extent to which the idea that virtually every Taylor fight is now ‘the biggest test of her career’ — which is undeniably true of three of her most recent four, including this Saturday — grows stale; that her being such a constant in the Irish sporting zeitgeist has led to a slight fatigue in terms of public interest for this rematch.
So, as I strolled into Liffey Valley, I couldn’t help but wonder the extent to which the mood inside might be a little bit more damp than was the case at the equivalent first public event in a sun-kissed Dundrum square back in spring.
As it turned out, I probably just needed a kick up the hole: the place was rocking.
For two hours before Taylor emerged to perform a perfunctory, 10-minute training exercise with her coach, Ross Enamait, both floors were thronged with a couple hundred men, women and children shuffling into the best vantage point from which they cheer Taylor into the makeshift ring.
Pop music blared at an ostentatious volume and there was a huge volume, too, of media from Ireland and the UK who mingled with undercard boxers, trainers and managers at ringside.
It was, for all intents and purposes, the same as it ever was.
Taylor, though, was a bit different, at least in so far as is possible after enduring 23 of these rigmaroles since turning pro following the Rio Olympics.
As she climbed into the ring behind Enamait, the Bray woman of course gave a couple of customary waves and smiles towards the young girls who shrieked her name from their fathers’ shoulders. Other than that, though, there was probably less pageantry than we’ve ever seen from her before. In place of her typically ebullient vibe there was a cold, frowning focus, and a particular viciousness with which she hit Enamait’s pads.
Even the photographers struggled to get a smile out of her afterwards. Eddie Hearn did better as he lined up alongside Taylor for a short interview with Saturday’s fight broadcaster, DAZN. Then, through a blur of bodies and screams, Taylor was gone.
Hearn is well able to plámás Irish media but he seemed sincerely blown away by the turnout. He explained that not even Anthony Joshua commands such bedlam, and such adulation from young fans in particular, during his fight-week events in the UK.
From first-hand experience of both, that’s an accurate assessment. But what’s equally true is that kids wouldn’t show up to an Anthony Joshua event fully expecting a moment of face-to-face time — a fist-bump, a selfie, whatever — with their hero, whereas Taylor supporters know that she’ll usually make a significant effort afterwards to make as many kids’ days as is possible.
On Wednesday, though, for the first time in memory, several younger fans at the railings around the parameter left disappointed that their screams of ‘Katie’ went unanswered. Taylor posed for only a couple of pictures before she was whisked away from the mayhem.
To be clear, all of that is absolutely fine. While it might have been anticlimactic for some young supporters, this was a public workout three days before an elite boxing match, not a meet-and-greet.
Taylor plainly sees this second homecoming not as a celebration but as a work trip only — and she’s wise to view it through that lens: for all intents and purposes, her career is on the line against Chantelle Cameron this Saturday.
There have been hints that she and her team feel that Taylor engaged in too many media obligations on the week of the first fight, that the entire process became mentally draining to the point that it might have contributed to her being relatively flat when it counted.
Those ‘obligations’, by the way, were mostly promotional rather than with traditional media, with whom she speaks for about two hours per year, not to mind on a given fight week.
The word is that Taylor won’t be doing much media at all this week, which doesn’t bode especially well ahead of Thursday’s literal press conference. She has agreed to a quick roundtable chat, mind, which she will doubtless find excruciating.
Of course, refining her week’s duties might well help her to generate the extra few per cent required to reverse the result from the first fight.
It’s far from inconceivable. And suddenly, you’re back to wondering again.
