Rory

🇮🇪 Does Katie Taylor Really Need To Be Ranked? 🥊 I woke up this morning to see the debate already raging about whether Katie Taylor is Ireland’s greatest ever sportsperson. I’m not sure why it matters, and I doubt Katie Taylor cares much either. Greatness across different sports and generations cannot be neatly arranged into a league table. What can be said with certainty is that Taylor leaves boxing as a pioneer, an icon and one of Ireland’s truly global sporting superstars. Her story deserves to be remembered properly. She began boxing when girls were barred from amateur competition in Ireland, sometimes fighting simply as “K Taylor”. She became Olympic champion when women’s boxing finally arrived at the Games, then built a professional career of 26 victories from 27 fights, winning world titles at lightweight and super lightweight. Last night, she finished where an Irish sporting story of this magnitude deserved to finish. Croke Park. 80,000 people. Undisputed champion. Taylor comprehensively outclassed the previously unbeaten Flora Pili, then placed her gloves in the centre of the ring and arranged those championship belts around them. There was something wonderfully fitting about the simplicity of it. “Croke Park! We did it.” Yes, Katie, you did. Perhaps her greatest achievement cannot be measured in belts, medals, victories or mythical arguments about Ireland’s greatest athlete. It can be found in every young girl who now regards boxing as somewhere she belongs. Taylor helped build that road. She walked away from it last night as champion, seemingly as grounded as when the journey began. What a legacy. What an athlete. What an Irish sporting icon.