Maurice Brosnan: Croke Park's memorable Irish goodbye for a hometown hero

Bridget Taylor cheers on her daughter Katie Taylor during the final round. Pic: INPHO/Gary Carr

It will grate on some when we say Croke Park has never witnessed scenes like this, but the reality still holds. To be in this storied ground, full to the rafters, with almost every individual there for one sportsperson was simply something to behold.

For her last act, Katie Taylor laid her black boxing gloves in the centre of the ring and walked away. Her manager Brian Peters, promoter Eddie Hearn, handler Tomas Rohan and trainer Ross Enamait followed with the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO super-lightweight titles and the tricolour. All day long, it had been building to the moment when the big house would rise for Katie Taylor, now a three-time undisputed world champion. When that moment came, it was overwhelming.

What a wonder. What a thing that this career, built on defying expectations, culminated here in a coronation. The main event bout against France's Flora Pili unfolded without any real cause for concern, a 100-90, 100-90 and 98-91 unanimous decision that was comfortably earned.

This was the first boxing event to be held at Croke Park since Muhammad Ali fought Al "Blue" Lewis on July 19, 1972 and the crowd that turned out was surreal. It spanned all corners of the country and all walks of life. There were people who’d never been to the Drumcondra venue before and never expected to, sporting diehards, event junkies, families and friends flashing camera torches to each other from the Hogan Stand to the Cusack. There were people who looked delighted or bemused by Westlife’s performance. But all of them were there in tribute to this Irish sporting legend. If the fight was secondary, the occasion was everything.

Taylor’s final ring walk began at 9.56pm, to the sound of ‘All Hail King Jesus’, with an accompanying fireworks display that lit up the Dublin sky. She didn’t step into the ring until 10.01pm. This was an individual determined to drink it all in. They finally started swinging at 10.10pm.

“I allowed myself to enjoy the ring walk,” she explained afterwards. “I allowed myself to look around and soak it all in. But once I stepped into the ring, my mind was very much fixed on actually winning this fight.

“It wasn’t actually too difficult for me to do that. I switched on right from the start. I have a real live opponent in front of me, an unbeaten opponent in front of me, someone who is there to win the fight as well. I had to be sharp, I had to be focused and most importantly as I said, was to get my hand raised.” Pili is a good opponent but not a great one. She started on the outside and struggled with the champion’s speed throughout. CompuBox has obvious issues and has been used dubiously as evidence in previous Taylor fights, yet its finding that Pili landed just seven punches in the first three rounds felt about right. The gulf in class was obvious.

The counter-punch approach had no joy against a master of the step-in, straight right and rapid retreat. Pili’s best round of the night was in the seventh when she opted for the merits of volume and let loose. Even then, Taylor stung her with a sharp uppercut before the bell.

While acknowledging that it wasn’t her career-best performance, the Irish champion was still content that the occasion matched the ambition.

“The country’s Olé, Olé, Olé's carried me all over the world. They travelled to Cardiff, they travelled to Leeds, they travelled to Manchester, Brooklyn, Boston, Dallas, Manhattan, they travelled all over the world to watch me fight. That is why this fight was so special to me because I wanted to put on a performance worthy of everyone’s support over the years. I wanted to put on a career-best performance.” 

The remarkable element of that era is how she built it, piece by piece. A defining feature has been her craft and body of work. There are precious few individual athletes who could fill a stadium in such a singular way. Fewer still are afforded the opportunity to go out in such glorious circumstances, after such a commanding display and such a stirring reminder of their greatness. Taylor exits at the top. The Once Upon A Time show ended in a fairytale.

In the end, the pair met in the middle and swung wildly. The final bell sounded and she started to smile. That is another part of this extraordinary legacy; she did it differently, she did it her way, she blazed a trail and she enjoyed it.

She made sure to keep it interesting all the way too. There were losses as an amateur and one as a professional to Chantelle Cameron. Even the greatest sporting stories, the ones that endure, need an element of adversity.

“Even the losses and the setbacks, I always think they are a great opportunity to show the world what your character is like. I was able to come back from those losses with a great win. It is just all part of it; that is where all the growth happens as well.” 

She went to the well, she went to the ends of the earth, she went to the home of boxing and the home of Irish sport. In the end, there was nowhere left to go.