Katie Taylor and Flora Pili, right, square-off in the company of Brian Peters, Katie Taylor's manager, left, and Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Strip away the romance of the Katie Taylor story, excise the Hollywood-style screenplay that Tinseltown will surely transfer to celluloid sooner rather than later, and there is one critical last act to be written in a career that comes to a close in Croke Park this Saturday.
Christian Cherci, manager to Flora Pili, Taylor’s final opponent, put it at Tuesday’s press conference that this fight won’t act as any meaningful filter to the Irishwoman’s wider career.
He was right. Her legacy is long secured. But he was wrong too.
Eddie Hearn reminded everyone that there were six belts up for debate when the main event gets going at the weekend, and that Taylor currently only has four of them. “We gotta win this fight first, or else it’s all for nothing,” said Taylor’s trainer Ross Enamait.
This is not a man who minces the few words that escape his mouth and make it as far as a public audience.
This was a short, stab punch of an opinion, delivered without fuss or fanfare from a stage in Dublin set up to celebrate someone still in work mode.
Hearn, the man orchestrating much of the circus that inevitably surrounds events like this, had already hit on the same vein earlier in the day. How, he asked, does Taylor separate the majesty of the occasion with what matters most in the ring?
This is not a hypothetical question. Taylor had displayed real, raw emotion when meeting Chantelle Cameron in Dublin just three years ago. And she had to pause for a strategic drink or two when asked some of the big-picture questions here.
This is her last fight. The last time she will have her hands strapped. The last time she will walk from her dressing room primed for a fight. The last time she will put her body and her reputation on the line inside those ropes.
“I’m not trying to reflect too much on it because I do have a job to do and it is too dangerous a sport to have your mind in the ring and your heart out of it,” she said. “I have a job to do, and I’m very much focused on the job.
“But I have allowed myself to think about it a little bit over the last while, just thinking about the last three years in the ring, all the amazing sparring partners, having the chance to headline all these amazing arenas.
“Now I have a chance to end my career in my dream venue in Croke Park, this really is beyond my wildest dreams. The most important thing is that I get my hand raised. It’s business as usual for me, it’s not going to be a walk in the park.
“She is here to win as well, and I’m very aware of that as well. It’s going to be a tough fight for sure.”
Ireland’s 2012 Olympic gold medallist has never been one for all this chat. She joked about upending the stage after finishing her last pre-fight press conference here, but that wasn’t happening. She’s not been one for drama either.
