Katie perfect for pro game, says trailblazer Deirdre

Katie Taylor faces a fork in the road in the coming weeks: Stick with amateur boxing and fight to retain her gold medal in Rio in 2016, or turn professional.

If she decides on the latter, she might want to listen to Deirdre Gogarty.

Deirdre, originally from Mornington in Co Meath but now a resident of Lafayette in the US state of Louisiana, is so in thrall to boxing that she married her husband Victor Morrison in the ring at the boxing club where she teaches youngsters.

She has also been a trailblazer for women’s boxing globally and, as Ireland’s only ever female professional boxing world champion, she believes Taylor and the pro game could be a perfect match.

“Katie is that talented that she won’t have to change her style too much for the pros,” she said, “although just like in men’s boxing the women’s professional game is as much about fighting as technical ability.

“The big money days of the ’90s are long past but Katie can be the spark to rejuvenate that. She will command huge money and the other women will be delighted if she raises the sport’s profile, because it means they will earn more as well. They will see the dollar signs and welcome her on board for that reason alone.”

Born in 1969, Deirdre sprang to fame when she featured against the original Million Dollar Baby, American Christy Martin, on the undercard of Mike Tyson’s heavyweight title defence against Frank Bruno in Feb 1989 in Las Vegas. It was a far cry from her upbringing in Ireland and, as she told RTÉ’s John Murray earlier this week, Katie wrote her a letter more than 12 years ago bemoaning the lot of women’s boxing in Ireland, in much the same way she had found it difficult to break into the upper echelons of a nascent sport during the 1980s.

“It was emotional, because I had been through so much,” she said of watching Katie’s bouts for gold. “The chances of women fighting in the Olympics back then [the 1980s] was almost unimaginable.”

Deirdre said she took to boxing after seeing Jack Dempsey on television and as a reaction to being bullied at school. By the time Barry McGuigan won the world title in 1985 she had fallen “head over heels with boxing”.

“I just had an incredible drive for it. [People] think it’s just talent that gets people where they are. It’s not a matter of just talent, it’s the drive that’s so rare, so special,” she said.