Colin Sheridan: Whatever the outcome of this fight, Katie had already won

When Katie Taylor was a kid there were no women boxers headlining anything. Whatever she saw for herself, it could never have been this bloody glorious

Katie Taylor and her mother Bridget after her undisputed world lightweight championship fight with Amanda Serrano at Madison Square Garden in New York

One can only wonder what a nine-year-old Katie Taylor would have made of it all. An Irish boxer, retaining her world title in Madison Square Garden - boxing's most hallowed turf - in a fight that somehow outshone the hyperbolic frenzy that preceded it. If she can’t see it, so the catchphrase goes, she can’t be it. Another stigma Taylor destroyed with an uppercut. When she was a kid there were no women boxers headlining anything. Whatever she saw for herself, it could never have been this bloody glorious.

In contemplating this fight, you could have been forgiven for thinking Taylor had already won, regardless of the outcome. 

If women's boxing was virtually subterranean when she was a kid, the sport was barely breaking the surface of our consciousness when she won her gold medal at the London Olympics. Had she failed to fulfill her own prophecy then, one wonders would nights like last Saturday ever have been possible.

Her victory there propelled her name to the point of ubiquity. Though her shyness and humility precluded her from overexposure, she nonetheless completed the journey to the top of the podium. 

The fact she did it under the weight of suffocating expectation made it all the more special. Never betraying her values in succeeding was perhaps her greatest achievement of all.

Which made her shock elimination at the Rio Olympics four years later all the harder to stomach, but easier to understand. It was as if she had created a world, only to herself be conquered by it. She had her rise, we consoled ourselves, and this was to be her fall.

A line from a song from The National sprang to mind “stay down champion, stay down”. Rio hurt but she had more than done her bit. Now she could sit back and revel in the fruits of her pioneering exploits. We trusted her instincts. Turning professional however - to the ignorant amongst us - seemed a rash, if understandable - decision.

Here was an aging warrior, overcome and overtaken by the sport she helped define, deciding to enter professional boxing, a game notorious for empty promises, and in the case of women's boxing - emptier arenas. She was like an artist tearing down her greatest works, and risking all by starting again. This could’ve ended badly, in some one horse-town, cheered on by snake oil salesmen, drunks and dreamers, but, in Eddie Hearn, Taylor chose an unlikely patron and protector. 

Hearn, the boxing promoter with a cartoon character personality, was the Medici to Taylor’s Michelangelo. 

Still, we worried, where was it all going? Where would it all end up?

That it did in fact end up in New York and at boxing's Mecca - the MSG - is testament to everything Taylor did before and after turning professional. As we as a society attempt to undo the systemic imbalance of generational ignorance and indifference to women's sport - we often over-correct by throwing money at a problem, without considering the structural and foundational reform required to grow something worthwhile. 

Taylor benefitted from falling in love with the most democratic and brutal of sports. Boxing gyms famously reward one quality above all others, regardless of gender- graft. That she had the desire and craft to go with it enabled Taylor to excel, even if the world which she would soon conquer was yet to be created. There were enough boys for her to box, so she boxed them.

Still, in those early professional bouts, it seemed the most she could hope for was some financial reward. She kept going. Kept fighting. Kept being her humble, hard-working self. She allowed Hearn to talk her up, often playfully rebuking him for his over-the-top enthusiasm for her and what she was trying to achieve. 

She won early and she won often but even then we wondered how she would turn this sow's ear of a hand she’d been dealt by being so brilliant at a sport so many wanted to ignore, into the silk purse she eventually did.

There were many reasons why this should not have worked. Systemic prejudices, for one. Personal trauma behind the scenes. Injuries. Age. Life. Take your pick. Taylor, by failing in Rio, had shown us how human she was, but like all the great champions, her will proved otherworldly.

And so we set our alarms or we stayed up super late, another mark of the magnetism of Taylor's talent, and we watched. The scene had been set all week by those lucky enough to be there, but nothing could have prepared those watching for those moments before the fighters emerged, as the magnitude of the occasion finally hit home.

“This is the moment of truth”, said commentator Todd Grisham as Taylor appeared at the edge of the arena to begin her ring walk, “The biggest night in the history of a sport, and it's the best opponent she's ever faced”. 

As a warrior, you must live for these moments. One wonders did the nine year old Katie Taylor ever think it possible. Over ten epic rounds, Taylor and Serrano proved the folly of the gender lie by giving the boxing world their fight of the year. 

For those there, they may never see anything like it again.

Finally, after what seems like a decade of toxic fog smothering the purest of sports, the cloud lifted, dispersed by the mighty gust of its most humble star. In the dying moments of this forever memorable encounter, Taylors right knee dipped perilously close to the hallowed blue canvas. For an eternal moment, it looked like her legs might finally give way. Somehow, amid a tornado of flailing fists scored by a crescendo of demented screams, she found the resolve to straighten and stay standing. That she did was as remarkable as it was almost irrelevant. For whatever the outcome of this fight for the ages, Katie had already won.