The Ending She Wrote Herself
Right then. It is done. Katie Taylor boxed for the last time on Saturday night, in front of 83,000 people at Croke Park, and she beat Flora Pili by scores of 100-90, 100-90 and 98-91 to retire as the undisputed super lightweight champion of the world. Make no mistake, that is the greatest send-off any fighter from Britain or Ireland has ever had, and I do not think it is close. Croke Park had not hosted a boxing match in 54 years. It waited for the right one.
I told you on Friday it would end wide and it ended wide. That is not me patting myself on the back — anyone who has watched Katie Taylor for the last ten years knew Pili, unbeaten or not, was walking into a different sport. But knowing something and watching it happen with 83,000 Irish voices singing along to Westlife and then to the folk songs are two very different things. If you know, you know.
How The Fight Went
It was not a slugfest, and I will be honest, it was never going to be. Both women started tight. Pili was the bigger body and she tried to make the size count, but Taylor picked her moments, let go in short flurries that lifted the whole stadium, and — this is the bit people forget she can do — showed proper defence when Pili tried to walk her down. By the halfway point she was banking rounds with her feet and her jab, the way she did in the second and third Chantelle Cameron fights rather than the way she fought the first one.
Rounds Seven And Eight
Pili deserves credit here. Round seven was her best of the night by a mile. She let her hands go, landed combinations that had Taylor covering up and giving ground, and for two rounds the Frenchwoman looked like the 12-0 fighter with nothing to lose that she is. Round eight was shared. Taylor moved, jabbed, and took her time. That is a 40-year-old champion managing a fight, not a champion in trouble. The one judge who gave Pili a round saw one of those two — the other two gave her nothing at all.
The Last Ten Seconds
And then the last round. Taylor kept the plan going right up until the ten-second clapper, and then she did what she has done for the whole of her career: she stood in the pocket and traded. Pili obliged. The noise from 83,000 people for those ten seconds was the loudest thing I have heard at a boxing event. That was the moment. That was the goodbye.
What The Record Says
Taylor finishes 26-1. Undisputed at lightweight, undisputed at super lightweight three times over, the trilogy with Amanda Serrano that sold out Madison Square Garden and then headlined its own night in Texas, the Cameron loss avenged twice. Her one defeat was to a fighter she then beat twice. Let's not beat around the bush — there is no argument to be had. She is the greatest fighter these islands have produced in the modern era, man or woman, and the 83,000 in Croke Park tells you the public knows it.
Luke's Verdict
She went out on top, at home, undisputed and unbeaten in her last seven. There is no rematch to chase, no belt she does not own, no crowd bigger than the one she just walked away from. Fighters almost never get the ending they want. Katie Taylor did, because she earned it, and because she was clever enough to stop while she was still the best. Class, start to finish. Read the rest of the Croke Park results on our news page, including the bizarre no-contest between Dave Allen and Thomas Carty.