WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
WHEN the time comes for Katie Taylor to reflect on her great career, she may yet conclude that Saturday’s fight against Amanda Serrano, even as the main event at Madison Square Garden, was less significant than her first.
Winning her first alphabet belt, becoming the world lightweight champion and winning Olympic gold – Taylor will know the gravity of what preceded each at Dublin’s National Stadium in 2001, on October 31.
A promising 15-year-old fighter, in the first-ever sanctioned women’s fight in Ireland, Taylor finally demonstrated her vast potential against Alanna Audley, 16, and did so in front of a passionate crowd.
Taylor had been boxing since she was 10, honing her talent but doing so without a platform or fights. Even with the Irish Amateur Boxing Association’s vote in 1997 to allow women’s boxing, a very first fight required strong lobbying from her father, the influential Pete Taylor, former kickboxer Mercedes Taaffe Cooper, and ultimately a further four years.
Nicola Adams, another future Olympic champion, was among those who also fought that night against Irish opposition, but it was the fight that
