ODDLY, IT WAS Naoya ‘Monster’ Inoue’s knockout of Marlon Tapales on St Stephen’s morning, Irish time, which accentuated the sheen on Katie Taylor’s latest crowning glory a month earlier.
With Inoue’s 10th-round stoppage of Tapales in their super-bantamweight showdown in Koto-Ku, Japan, Inoue became only the fourth active boxer in becoming a two-weight undisputed champion.
Indeed, they are the only four boxers to have fully unified the titles in two separate weight classes since the four-belt era began almost 20 years ago: Naoya Inoue. Terence Crawford. Claressa Shields. Katie Taylor.
Rarefied air. And had Taylor not so recently proven wrong the virtual consensus that she was doomed to a second defeat to Chantelle Cameron at Dublin’s 3Arena, one would have argued that the only way from here is down.
What to get for a woman who has won everything?
Taylor will tell you that her real Christmas present was a stretch back home in Bray with her grandmother, nieces and nephews. These are the only moments to which she looks forward more eagerly than her fights and, just like those fights, family times comes but twice or three times a year these days.
From the millions she has earned during her seven-year professional boxing career, Taylor has made just one notable impulse purchase: a speedboat which she takes out on the lake near her home and training base of Vernon, Connecticut. If her faith, her boxing, and her family and friends are the three pillars to Taylor’s life, those hours spent on the water are the coping stone on top.
On the boxing front, there is only one way that Taylor will be able to top these last couple of years in which she lit up a sold-out Madison Square Garden with Amanda Serrano and became the undisputed ruler of two divisions on home soil. That is to go bigger.
No, not up to welterweight (albeit you wouldn’t put it past her: the champions up there are eminently out-boxable), but to the great outdoors.
Taylor has already beaten the game but a stadium fight feels like the final piece of it that she could conceivably change for women’s boxing; the last available act without precedence and the loudest swansong imaginable.
It makes complete sense that Taylor would push for it, just as she did when she uncharacteristically grabbed the mic at centre-ring after besting Chantelle Cameron at the 3Arena last month and called for a night at Croke Park.
It just might not make sense for the people who can make that happen.
It’s been almost a year, now, since Taylor’s promoter Eddie Hearn and Croke Park Ltd commercial director Peter McKenna left things on a sour — if not irreconcilable — note.
Publicly, Hearn claimed that it would cost Matchroom three times more to rent Croke Park than it would Wembley Stadium or, really, any 70,000-plus-capacity stadium in Europe. McKenna refuted this, stating that the rental fee for a fight at Croke Park would be €400,000, roughly on a par with any similarly sized venue on the continent. He also suggested that there would be been a significant, additional security cost on top of the €400,000 for which he said Matchroom were reluctant to pay.
McKenna is an astute communicator and, in the court of public opinion, he made Matchroom look like mugs. The reality behind closed doors was that the €400,000 price to which he alluded was merely the figure specifically referred to as ‘rent’ in a longer list of charges which were sent to Matchroom in two parts, and on separate days.
The first prospective bill, including the €400,000 rent, amounted to €580,000 in total. Matchroom agreed to it in principle and, as far as Hearn was concerned, he had reached a deal with Croke Park.
However, they subsequently received a second list of operational costs for use of the stadium — including security fees — which amounted to €507,000. This brought the total cost up toward €1.1 million, whereas Wembley would work out at the equivalent of €400,000 all-inclusive.
Hearn felt as though he was being taken for a ride. In reality, it was just the cost of doing business in Ireland and, specifically, with Croke Park Ltd who neither needed Hearn’s business nor did they feel particularly passionately about welcoming a professional boxing event to GAA HQ.
Hearn then overplayed his hand by going public with his grievances. It’s remarkable that he felt he could win a popularity contest against anyone anywhere, not to mind versus the GAA in Ireland.
He called for government support, which alienated even those who like to refer to the GAA as the ‘Grab All Association’. And he was clumsy in how he phrased it all, somehow failing to recognise the unpalatability of an English multi-millionaire demanding Taxpayers’ Money™ from Ireland in order to turn a profit on these shores through private enterprise.
There was more nuance to the situation than he could successfully explain. For starters, with the proposed ticket prices starting at around the €40 mark, Matchroom would only break even on the event if they put 55,000-odd bums in seats. And even though they could theoretically foot the difference between €400,000 and €1.1m out of the goodness of their hearts, neither Hearn nor the shareholders to whom he is answerable would have fancied the gut-punch of a loss.
Secondly, there is plenty of precedent for taxpayers’ money being put towards ‘private’ sporting events in this country. Indeed, there literally exists an application process through which the government can be asked to assist with the funding of a sporting event. They dipped into the taxpayers’ pocket for the Women’s Irish Open, a Ladies European Tour event, last year for example.
Thirdly, Hearn wasn’t so much looking for a government handout as he was asking that the government subsidise some of the additional costs such as policing, just as it does for All-Ireland finals. Matchroom felt such a request reasonable from the point of view that a once-in-a-lifetime Taylor bout at Croke Park could be considered a sporting event of similar national significance, but they failed to articulate this publicly.
As such, Peter McKenna and Croke Park took a unanimous decision in the war of PR.
Taylor was instead brought to the 3Arena where the rental cost was comparably tiny and the ticket prices were extortionate. Across Taylor’s two homecoming bouts against Cameron, Matchroom pocketed nearly €6m on the gate. And hey, whaddaya know? Eddie Hearn loves Ireland now.
Hearn says he’ll stop at nothing to make Croke Park happen this time around but he will, of course, pull a U-ey unless he can find a means of bridging the gap between the parties’ respective valuations.
He has already made a worthwhile tweak for this particular rematch and indicated that he would prefer for things to play out more privately the second time around.
And so the Croke Park cycle begins again. And so it will likely play out again the same way, with all sides of the equation making sure to be seen to show interest in making it happen because Katie Taylor is a great bit of stuff, but nobody truly interested enough to compromise on their respective positions.
You may find yourself thinking, ‘Does it have to be Croke Park, though? Why not try the Aviva? Didn’t Katie Taylor play soccer for Ireland?’ These are all valid questions.
The business reality of it is that ticket prices at the 50,000-seat Aviva would have to be more expensive than they would for the 80,000-capacity Croke Park in order for the event to make money. Even a sold-out Aviva at Croke Park prices wouldn’t break even. And a more expensive Aviva might not sell out at all. It’s a delicate balance.
But the long and short of it is that Croke Park is Taylor’s dream, and probably her last remaining dream in boxing terms.
There is something in the iconography of one great Irish sporting institution competing at the home of our national sports that has the potential to endure. That the last boxer to headline at Croke Park was Muhammad Ali in 1972 only accentuates the appeal.
Whether or not she can pull off a stadium fight will have little impact on Taylor’s legacy in the grand scheme of things, so it’s a case of go big or go home.
Or, rather, it’s a case of going home one last time and going as big as possible.
