Louder and louder: Let’s raise a final Hallelujah for Katie Taylor

“Louder than the unbelief, my weapon is a melody. Heaven comes to fight for me. I’m gonna sing in the middle of the storm
Louder and louder you’re gonna hear my praises roar, 
Up from the ashes hope will arise” – Raise a Hallelujah – Bethel Music

Sometime shortly after 10 o’clock on Saturday night, the lights at Croke Park will dim. David Diamante will take up the mic in the centre of the stadium and the spotlight will turn towards the Hogan Stand.

Katie Taylor will emerge in front of 83,000.

It is a moment in Irish boxing that has never been felt before. Nor will it be again.

Taylor is not just a once-in-a-lifetime sportsperson – she is a complete once off.

That the Bray bombshell has sold out Croke Park – and in double-quick time – for her clash with Flora Pilli is a testament to her enduring popularity.

It is at a time like this where it is important to consider that it wasn’t always this way. 

Taylor didn’t just have to fight for herself and for women’s boxing, but gaining wider recognition didn’t come easy either.

Now, though, the Bray woman is ready to grace a stage that few have experienced.

The 83,000 who will click through the iconic stadium’s turnstiles on Saturday will make it the 10th best attended boxing fight EVER, the sixth highest ever in Europe.

It will be above the 80,000 who bore witness to Carl Froch v George Groves at Wembley.

Taylor fought on the undercard when Anthony Joshua stopped Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley in 2017, but a small percentage of that saw her stop Nina Meinke in the seventh round.

When Eddie Hearn announced to his father, Barry, that he was putting Taylor as a headline act, the Matchroom founder responded: “No-one’s interested in the women’s boxing”. Soon, however, Hearn senior was gripped. “Oh my God,” he was reported to have gasped from ringside as he marvelled at Taylor’s ring craft.

Years earlier, one male administrator in the sport asked her: “What do you do with your breasts when you’re in the ring?”

Those were the type of jabs she had to dodge outside the ring, never mind the punches inside it.

Taylor overcame them all.

When she fought Natasha Jonas at the ExCel Arena in London en route to Olympic gold in 2012, the decibel levels rocketed to 113.7. The wrestling arena could hear the roars of the Irish hoards as Taylor gunned down the British fighter. 

It wasn’t always so for Taylor.

After pretending to be a boy in her early teens, Taylor made her appearance in Ireland’s first sanctioned female fight on Halloween night in 2001, beating Alanna Audley from Belfast at the National Stadium.

Just four years later, she was crowned European champion for the first time, at the age of 18, beating Eva Wahlstrom in Norway. Taylor also overcame Wahlstrom as a pro, at Madison Square Garden in December 2018.

That European final took place in the Quality Hotel in Tonsberg.

Quality by name but, well . . .

The venues for these things were never quite going to be boxing royalty..

Think of the Talkatora Indoor Stadium in New Delhi. Or the Greenbank Sports Academy in Liverpool. What of the Hotel Helikon in Keszthely? Or even the Spodek in Katowice?

The Polyvalant Hall in Bucharest was where she won her 2014 World Amateur Championships gold. 

Four years earlier, the world lightweight gold was won in the Garfield Sobers Gymnasium in Bridgetown, Barbados.

Her last major medal in an Irish vest came in 2016, a world bronze secured by the time she lost to Estelle Mossely in the  Barys Arena in Astana, Kazakhstan.

The last gold was taken in the Hall Gymnasium in Jeju, South Korea in 2014, overcoming Yana Alekseevna from Azerbaijan in the final after getting the better of Mira Potkonen in a quarter-final.

The flights to her whopping hail of 18 major medals at amateur level also took in places like Ningbo and Qinhuangdao in China, Mykolaiv, Pazardzhik and Vejle.

Many were fought well away from the glare of the media and completely away from crowds.

It is remarkable now to look back at the newspapers from the morning of November 1, 2001. Some of the coverage of that historic fight between Taylor and Audley refers to “Cassie Taylor” winning the bout. Twenty-five years on, the globe knows Katie Taylor.

In May 2022, Taylor and Amanda Serrano produced a stirring 10 rounds in front of a sold out Madison Square Garden. 

The fight was a classic, Taylor surviving a bruising, battering fifth stanza during which many watched from between the gaps in their fingers, fearing that her dethroning as the world lightweight queen was imminent.

Taylor summoned, from somewhere, a remarkable response and, just under half an hour later, David Diamante was uttering the words we’d waited for: ‘And still’.

There were 19,187 in the Garden that night. Four times that amount will wedge into Croke Park on Saturday night.

When Taylor and Serrano danced again, in November 2024, it came after the Croke Park dream seemed to have been dashed.

A freak injury deprived Serrano of a homecoming bout of her own against Meinke. Just minutes before their fight at Coliseo Jose Miguel Agrelot in San Juan, Puerto Rico was due to get underway, it was cancelled with Serrano deemed unfit to compete due to an eye injury caused by a hair product she had used two days beforehand.

In between times, Taylor had two tussles with Chantelle Cameron in front of 9,000 at the 3Arena in Dublin.

The first saw Taylor’s homecoming taken down by Cameron, who scored a majority decision win on cards of 96-94, 96-94, 95-95.

The Dublin Docklands hummed to Taylor’s tune that night, but was silenced by Cameron.

It is striking to look back now at Taylor’s ring walk from that fight. The walk to the squared circle took her around five minutes.  “Coming Home” by Diddy – Dirty Money and “You Are More Than Able” by Elevation Worship were the tracks of choice and Taylor sung along as she took in the adulation from an Irish crowd – her first fight in an Irish ring in seven years, since beating Queen Underwood in the Brandon Hotel and Spa in Tralee.

Six months later – “the longest six months of my life”, she would later say – Taylor was back at ‘The Point’ to exact revenge on Cameron, this time the majority decision of 95-95, 98-92, 96-94 going in her favour.

“This is my real homecoming tonight,” she said in the ring. “You saw the worst of me in May. You saw the best of me tonight. Let’s get the trilogy in Croke Park.”

It has taken nearly three years for her to get her golden ticket to Croke Park, not however with Cameron in the opposite corner, but French challenger Pilli.

For Taylor-Cameron II, the Irish woman walked to the ring to Raise a Hallelujah from Bethel Music. The eyes said it all that night. Taylor meant business.

Psalm 18 has become a powerful reference point for Taylor. One line stands out: “He trains my hands for battle.” 

Her deep faith has long been part of the foundation beneath the gloves, summed up elsewhere in the psalm: “It is God who arms me with strength for battle.”

There was barely a ripple – save for the fireworks outside – when Taylor stepped into the ring on October 31, 2021. This Saturday, her echo will go all across the city.

After everything, she has earned her hallelujah.