IT’S BEEN A long time coming but on 20 May, Katie Taylor will finally make her first walk to a professional boxing ring in Ireland when she moves up in weight in a bid to relieve undisputed light-welterweight champion Chantelle Cameron of her mantle.
As the challenger, Taylor will enter the ring first — or so she presumes, anyway; the Bray woman couldn’t care less either way.
As the home fighter, such a moment will demand a grand entrance, maybe something especially Irish to ensure the 9,000-strong crowd is practically feral in time for Cameron’s own walk moments later.
“Maniac 2000!” Taylor laughs after some deliberation.
A bout with the also-undefeated Cameron, a career-biggest test for both women, has been mooted for several years but, in the end, was born on Instagram after Amanda Serrano withdrew from her rematch with Taylor in Dublin.
A shrug of her shoulders and a few tilts of her head from side to side sum up Taylor’s thoughts on Serrano’s injury, albeit she still hopes she can renew her rivalry with the Puerto Rican one day.
It was with her thumbs, however, that she did the talking earlier this month as she implored her promoter Eddie Hearn to ensure the 20 May date on which the 3Arena was available didn’t go to waste, politely inviting Cameron over for a scrap in the same Instagram post. Just over a week later, pens were put to paper and, once more, Taylor was coming home for the night she has spent the bones of her pro career dreaming about.
“I guess, once I heard Serrano was out, I was thinking, ‘What’s the best fight for everybody?’ And we all agreed that Chantelle was the obvious choice,” Taylor says.
“I was just trying to, I guess, put Eddie under pressure to make sure it was going to happen!”
“I was shocked”, Hearn says, “because normally Brian [Peters] would give me the heads-up – but I thought it was great. In boxing, if both fighters want to fight, generally it will happen.
“When she said that, and then Chantelle came back a few moments later and went, ‘I’m 100% up for this fight’, it was like… Sometimes you need a kick up the backside to make it happen.
“It would have been easy… because we had a call before that about waiting for Serrano, and it was just the uncertainty of, ‘What if we waited for her and it fell through again?’
“So Katie was adamant that May 20 was the date she would fight. I was happy to talk about just a fight, find someone from the rankings. I know she would fight anyone but I was quite surprised with the aggression.”
“I definitely could have taken an easier route”, Taylor explains, “but that’s not what I’m about. I think one thing that has marked my career is that I’ve always wanted the toughest fights, the hardest fights. I love these sorts of challenges.
“I have a chance to become a two-weight undisputed champion. This is a history-making fight for me and it’s a fight that motivates me, as well.”
Her trainer, Ross Enamait, agrees on all counts, describing Cameron as “definitely the toughest fight out there.
“She’s big, strong, she’s got a great boxing IQ, she does a bit of everything,” Enamait says of the 31-year-old ‘Il Capo’, whose professional record reads 17-0(8KOs).
He adds, however, that “a motivated Katie Taylor is a dangerous Katie Taylor and she’s motivated for this fight probably more than I think she even was for the Serrano fight. She’s firing on all cylinders right now.”
Naturally, Taylor’s family got a bit of a steer on the homecoming fight shortly before the official announcement 10 days ago.
“I usually just send the family WhatsApp group a text,” the lightweight champion explains. “‘By the way, fighting 20 May. Fighting Chantelle Cameron.’ And then everyone is like, ‘Let’s gooo! C’monnn!’” she laughs.
“The family are always so excited. They never miss a fight — they’re at every single fight.
“I think the friends are a bit worried that they’re not going to be able to get tickets… I’m not worried about that; I’m not handling tickets! But everyone’s really, really excited about it. I think there is a great buzz around the country about the fight.
It was only a few years ago where I was headlining a show where we were worried about whether I could sell out York Hall, but now here we are talking about the 3Arena being too small. I think that’s amazing progress in such a short space of time.
Taylor, in Dublin for only a day before flying back to her home in Vernon, Connecticut, to continue her training camp, followed Saturday’s Grand Slam decider in the rugby on her phone.
She’s asked if the fact that hers too is an Ireland-versus-England battle lends it any additional significance in the back of her mind.
She mulls it over for a few seconds. “I mean…” Taylor begins to laugh. “Probably…”
“Don’t mention it to my dad!” she continues, referring to the fact that her father and former trainer, Pete Taylor, is originally from Leeds.
Taylor does make a point of the fact that she is “undefeated” against British fighters across both her amateur and professional career, however, including in a semi-final bout with Cameron at the 2011 EU Championships. “I have very little memory of it but I know that I won the fight, so that’s all that really matters!” she says.
That bout 12 years ago has virtually no relevance to the one that will follow in eight weeks’ time. Cameron is now a totally different beast, Taylor too has made adaptations at 36, and the bookies see it as a close thing, with the Irishwoman about a 4/7 favourite and the Englishwoman the 7/5 underdog.
“It could end up being another classic, I think,” Taylor says. “Pro boxing is coming home.
“I need to pinch myself that it actually is happening at this stage.”
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