Katie Taylor bends another dream to her own reality in Croke Park finale

The Bray fighter signed off with a win over Flora Pili at Croke Park.

AND STILL: Katie Taylor celebrates after being declared victorious in her undisputed super lightweight championship fight with Flora Pili. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Not all dreams can come true, even on Katie Taylor’s night of nights.

Thomas Carty wasn’t midway through the first round of his heavyweight bout with Doncaster’s Dave Allen when he took a punch near the back of the head and stumbled forward through the ropes and out of the ring.

Carty’s next act was to suck in air through an oxygen mask while the stadium sat stunned and officials scratched their heads. A no-contest it was. Carty eventually walked awayrubbing his temple and ruing his rotten luck.

A son of Phibsborough, he had spoken pre-fight about growing up within earshot of the stadium and rocking up there to watch the Dubs play football. “Let’s fucking go,” he roared as he walked towards the ring and the opportunity of a lifetime.

And then he was done.

Just a few hours earlier and Emmet Brennan, another Dub whose childhood was silhouetted by Croker, was making his exit from the arena in a wheelchair after being sent to the canvas five times by the classy Taylor Bevan.

The Brennan-Bevan contest had been highlighted as a potential fight of the night. Brennan had a perfect 6-0 record. Lying flat on his back in the fourth as a white towel flew by his head was not how he saw this grandest of evenings going.

That’s life. That’s boxing.

This is a sport that oozes decades and decades of the most uplifting stories but for every ‘Cinderella Man’ there are hundreds of Thomas Cartys slipping through the ropes and Emmet Brennans prostrate and trying to focus on the sky above.

Taylor has been coronated many times, at European Olympic and World levels, as a pro and as an amateur. this was to be cap on all that and over 80,000 people swarmed on Croke Park to see the queen on her throne before she stood down.

There was danger in that.

“Defeat would be horrible tonight, we have to win,” Eddie Hearn told RTÉ. Taylor’s trainer Ross Enamait had said as much at Tuesday’s press conference and the star herself had made it the core of her week’s work even while embracing the love.

If Carty’s downfall had pulled the lever on party mode then it was only a pause. The crowd had amassed throughout the day, from before 4pm, through eight undercard fights, energising pop and rock tunes and a litany of good luck messages from everyone and anyone.

Jamie Dornan. Tommy Tiernan. Michael Flatley. Andrew Scott. Fintan McCarthy. Kenneth Egan. Ronan Keating. Brian O’Driscoll. Barry McGuigan. Kate O’Connor. Tyson Fury. Katie McCabe. Rory McIlroy. Padraig Harrington. Troy Parrott. Bosco.

We may have made up one of those, but you get the gist.

This was always more than just a sporting event. This was so much more than that, maybe even more than Katie. The crowd sang along to Bon Jovi and Oasis and then to the actual, real-life Westlife like it was the biggest karaoke in the world.

The Barry Keoghan video, a ringside rendition of ‘Grace’ and the strains of Amhrann na bhFiann accompanied by a shot of Taylor standing in the tunnel stirred the last of any blood that might have been left unmoved. If this place had a roof it might have spun off.

Flora Pili emerged to the Algerian-French rapper L’Algerino whose ‘Will To Conquer’ struggled to survive the blizzard of ‘ole, oles’. Then Taylor appeared, the sounds of ‘All Hail King Jesus’ her backing track as she spread her arms and took the long walk around.

Fireworks flared from the tips of the stadium, beams of light crisscrossed the sky, the crowd lost its collective s**t for the umpteenth time and then, and only then, did we get to a point that had been building like the opening of a shook fizzy bottle.

This felt like the Copper Box, Madison Square Garden and AT&T Stadium in Arlington all welded into one: a fight that was always big just kept sucking in more hype, more hope and more meaning with every second before that first bell.

Taylor had talked up her opponent, reminding us that she wasn’t going to bow out with an easy night after a career where she always took on the hard roads, and Pili wasn’t long proving she had the ability to do some damage.

One flurry in the third round had the Bray Bomber dodging off the ropes but Taylor was finding her feet and the French fighter’s measure, moving in to land punches and extricating herself while her opponent found fresh air.

She made the turn for home, from the fifth into the sixth of the ten rounds, in total command, though her trainer Ross Enamait had warned her to keep using those feet and avoid the rough stuff.

She didn’t always listen, Pili landing a few at the end of the seventh.

This was the sweet spot. The fear was that Pili wouldn’t be able to do her part and give Taylor and the people the contest they wanted. The even bigger fear was that the impossible, the unthinkable, might somehow happen.

It ended as you’d expect, as you’d want, with this country’s best ever boxer and a transformative and unifying figure of the rarest stock launching a tirade of shots as the last seconds of her boxing journey wound into retirement.

Another dream bent to her own reality.