Treat for Taylor fans as queen turns on power

More meat thrown to the lioness in Dublin last night.

An hour before Katie Taylor was due in the ring at the Grand Canal Theatre, her German opponent, Maike Klüners, sat at ringside watching videos of the Olympic gold medallist on the big screens while taking in her surroundings.

She looked out at the crowd in awe, but in the ring she looked on in awe too, between the flurries of shots she shipped in a heavy loss. In fairness, she kept it together in the first and fourth rounds but in between there was a standing count in the second and third as Taylor’s speed became problematic and her power became decisive.

It was billed as the start of the road to Rio but on this evidence, as if we didn’t know already, it won’t exactly be long and winding. That’s not to take away from Taylor, and she deserves this exhibition tour as reward for years at the top, just don’t expect an upset.

After all, her outmatched opponent – an EU bronze medallist and former Muay Thai champion — came to the ring with the lyrics ‘What is she good for…’ ringing around the auditorium. We’ll let you finish that sentence and thought process yourself.

Late on Friday night, after Taylor spent eight minutes beating up Karolina Grazcyk, the Pole went for a quiet drink in the bar and had a quiet word.

Through broken English, she explained that she’d only been in training for seven days in the last seven months. Her coach then noted that even had she been in the gym for all that time, she would still have been off the pace against the Olympic champion. It wasn’t fair on anyone, least of all those boxing in national finals that were shunted down the bill and off television screens.

This wasn’t as much of a battering – granted these things are relative – and crucially it was nowhere near as rushed in terms of organisation.

If finding a decent opponent, given there are barely a handful that can live with Taylor, is an issue across the board, the IABA could learn from other aspects, for this was a spectacle befitting of a national icon. Promoter Brian Peters creates showbusiness and maximises hype in nights that are as much about entertainment as sport. It’s why there were few empty seats and even fewer disappointed faces on show.

Here, he created a brilliant amphitheatre for boxing, its towering banks of seats climbing high over the ring on a night energised by and tingling with a sense of occasion. And everyone got their chance and had their moment.

The kids that filled the early bouts were bubbling as they entered the ring, while those films of Taylor filled the silence between contests. Even the art world got in on it, as Lahinch’s Michael Hanrahan, who has a portrait of the queen hanging in Buckingham Palace, painted the woman he described as “the real queen” from ringside as she danced on the canvas.

As for the best contest, Paddy Barnes scored a comfortable win, but not before being caught by a few bruising shots courtesy of Aidan Metcalfe of Crumlin.

Afterwards, the Belfast bronze medallist said he expected to head to the European Championships, despite not competing in the national finals where Kildare’s Hugh Myers took the light-flyweight crown. But that’s a debate for another day. Regardless at the ease of her victory, this night was about one person only.