Gavan Casey

EDDIE HEARN BITES the bullet before the question can be put to him.

“Croke Park: I know we always talk about it, but…”

A Katie Taylor fight with Amanda Serrano at the home of Gaelic games is still on his agenda, albeit Hearn insists it remains only “an idea for now”.

The Matchroom Boxing boss, though, believes Croker to be more doable now than has ever been the case previously. The spoke in the wheel of his previous efforts — the overall rental cost for the stadium: somewhere in the region of €1.1 million all told — may no longer be prohibitive.

“My gut feeling”, Hearn says, “is that Katie will fight Serrano again because I think the size of it… We’ve already had some very small talks with MVP (Serrano’s promoters) and stuff like that.

And I think Netflix would would want to run it back. I really feel like, y’know, with the success of their second fight on Netflix, the audience, that story… I just think that fight now generates so much money that it might be easier to suffer some of the costs of Croke Park.

“Like, Netflix like to build stories around stuff. I think the broadcaster may pay more because of the story and yeah, there’s just more money in the fight so, therefore, you might be more inclined to spend more on the fight.”

It nearly always comes down to the bottom line in boxing.

Of course, Hearn has always been able to ‘afford’ Croker but until now, he has never been able to stomach the idea of forking out a fee roughly twice the size of that charged by Wembley, for example, where Matchroom have staged some of their most iconic events.

He felt like he was being taken for a ride when he first saw Croke Park’s list of expenses in the autumn of 2022. Two Taylor fights at the 3Arena later, Hearn now understands it to be simply the cost of doing business in the Republic of Ireland.

And if Netflix or Jake Paul’s MVP Promotions or a combination of the two are willing to absorb the additional 500-odd-grand, the prospect of dialling up Peter McKenna once more becomes a little bit more palatable.

“And Croke Park have never been against it,” Hearn says. “I mean, I don’t think they’re queuing up to do a fight but they’ve never said to us, ‘We don’t want to do it,’ you know?

“The big question is does it sell out. And I just feel like now, yes. Like, off the back of that fight in Texas, the third Serrano fight — you know, they could fight 10 times and every fight would be a fight-of-the-year contender. And if you build a good Irish card on there as well, you put some real good fights on, I really think it would do well.”

When Taylor sold out Madison Square Garden for her original bout against Serrano in April 2022, around 65-70% of the fans in the sold-out, 20,000-capacity arena were Irish.

The ticket prices were reasonable for an elite professional boxing match, somewhere in the region of $50 for the most part.

With a similar pricing scheme and with the introduction of family tickets, surely a trilogy bout between the Irish icon and the Puerto Rican great in Ireland would at least draw a crowd of 65,000-plus at Croker?

“I really believe we would,” Hearn says. “And I’ve always believed that in the past but I have more confidence now than ever.


“It really is a one-off ticket, Serrano’s profile, a trilogy. You know the country better than me but, like, for me, that’s summit you just take your kids to. Like, everybody goes — all generations go.”

Hearn is aware, though, that the Croker discourse has long since worn thin with the general public, and Taylor has taken on enough wear and tear in the ring that he has to make it happen this summer or simply forget about it.

“I never talk on when it might end, but this could well be her last year in this sport,” Hearn says of his flagship female boxer. “And she’s just unbelievable.

“You know, after the last fight, that was the first time she’s said to me, ‘That was hard graft.’


“I mean, every fucking fight out of the last four or five have been!

But we got back to the changing room and she was like — I can’t remember the exact words, but something like, ‘It’s getting harder.’ I went, ‘Getting?! Fuck me.’
I said, ‘It’s been hard for about three years!’

“I said, ‘Katie, you’re out on your feet after three or four rounds!’ It was the first time where, if she had said to me then, ‘I’m done’, I wouldn’t have been surprised, the way the conversation was going. But she quickly sort of snapped back and then went the other way: ‘I can’t wait for the next one, blah, blah, blah.’
So I expect her to fight in the summer.

“And there’s two things she wants to do, Croke Park and Vegas,” Hearn adds.

“I think if we go to Vegas, we take it to The Sphere. Jim Dolan, who owns The Sphere and owns MSG — really, they want to bring the fight to Madison Square Garden again. The owner witnessed that [first] fight and he’s already apparently really interested in doing it again, but he also owns The Sphere — the same group — so apparently, there’s interest from him to stage the rematch in The Sphere.

“That would be unbelievable.”

Hearn says the World Boxing Council (WBC) have given Matchroom a month before their annual convention to formally begin talks with Serrano’s team about a Taylor trilogy. If that doesn’t move forward, the WBC will order Taylor to defend their belt — one of the components of her undisputed light-welterweight title — against her mandatory challenger and former foe, Chantelle Cameron.

Taylor is willing to fight either woman but there is simply more bang for her buck in boxing Serrano for a third time due to the cultural dents made by their first two fights, both of which were won narrowly by the Irishwoman.

That will mean Hearn has to go back into business with Jake Paul, against whom he currently has a defamation lawsuit. He doesn’t foresee it being an issue in negotiating a trilogy bout between the world’s two leading female boxers, however, even after he sewed it into Paul and MVP following Taylor’s victory in Dallas in November.

“I mean, it wasn’t overly pleasant last fight,” Hearn says. “It was sweet as — it was one of my most enjoyable nights, I think, ever.

“But I think at the same time, they do share a passion for delivering for their fighters.
I do think they would love to give Amanda Serrano that fight.

“I mean, they (Taylor and Serrano) already made a fortune on Netflix. They made a lot of money at MSG too but it was a seriously big payday last time and this one will be even bigger.”