{"id":43355,"date":"2026-06-08T05:38:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T05:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/katie-taylor-how-iconic-irish-fighter-finally-secured-dream-croke-park-bout\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T05:38:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T05:38:46","slug":"katie-taylor-how-iconic-irish-fighter-finally-secured-dream-croke-park-bout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/katie-taylor-how-iconic-irish-fighter-finally-secured-dream-croke-park-bout\/","title":{"rendered":"Katie Taylor: How iconic Irish fighter finally secured dream Croke Park bout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Still, 80,000 seats is a lot to shift and in today&#8217;s environment, only the top heavyweights, plus a handful of other stars including Saul &#8216;Canelo&#8217; Alvarez and Naoya Inoue can hit such heights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For Taylor, 39, and her team to have ambitions to command such an audience is evidence of the reverence in which she is held.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After Friday&#8217;s news conference, the Bray native and team set off on a four-day promotional tour around the island of Ireland, beginning in her home town.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It may be a farewell, but a test and not a testimonial is how Taylor wants to sign off. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The opportunity to regain the WBC portion of the light-welterweight title <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/boxing\/articles\/c1dqn2wwvexo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">[which was made vacant after last year&#8217;s Serrano win]<\/a> and retire undisputed is the dream.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But she has no designs on getting swept up in the emotion with undefeated Frenchwoman Flora Pili standing in her way. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Croke Park door appeared shut when an agreement could not be reached between Hearn and stadium authorities three years ago, so what has changed?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With costs to hire the stadium &#8220;twice as much as Wembley&#8221; according to the Matchroom chairman, it was difficult to see how the impasse would be broken.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For the company there is &#8220;not a whole lot financially&#8221; to be gained, but just as the rematch between Carl Froch and George Groves at Wembley Stadium in 2014 proved a big night for Matchroom, 80,000 at Croke Park can do likewise according to Hearn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That a female is fighting in front of 80,000 people, I think it&#8217;s the greatest moment of our [Matchroom&#8217;s] boxing history,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;re not going to be making much money on the night, but this is about more than that. My dad [Barry, Matchroom founder and president] might kill me, but what does it really matter what we make on a night like this?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;What we leave with is something we&#8217;ll never forget and also it&#8217;s important for the brand of our business.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/boxing\/articles\/cwy2yexn97ro?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Still, 80,000 seats is a lot to shift and in today&#8217;s environment, only the top heavyweights, plus a handful of other stars including Saul &#8216;Canelo&#8217; Alvarez and Naoya Inoue can hit such heights. For Taylor, 39, and her team to have ambitions to command such an audience is evidence of the reverence in which she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43357,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43355\/revisions\/43357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}