EP 1492 - Katie Taylor - Prepare To Perform

Tola Ogunlewe (0:05)

Welcome, everyone, back to the Athlete Maestro Podcast, the sports education podcast that helps young athletes like you break your mental and physical limitations in sports, as well as come up with a strategy and a plan to achieve your sports goals. I'm your host, Tola Ogunlewe, and this is episode 1492

Build your dream, prepare to perform, and retain your balance.

She is without doubt one of the greatest female boxers of all time. She is a three-time undisputed world champion in the lightweight and super lightweight divisions. Today on the show, Irish superstar, Katie Taylor.

Like every great female athlete before her, Katie Taylor had to blaze her own trail to get to the level she is today. From pretending to be a boy to get the opportunity to fight, to being involved in the first officially sanctioned female fight in Ireland, Katie Taylor has definitely come a long way. Growing up, Katie wasn't around there. She boxed, she played football, she was part of an athletics club as well. Although she got a scholarship to attend University College Dublin, Katie would drop out to focus on sport. Her father, who himself was a professional boxer, was Katie's coach. The thing with female boxing is that at that time, it wasn't mainstay. It was odd that a girl wanted to punch another girl in the face. But Katie was not deterred. At the age of 15, she fought in the first officially sanctioned female boxing match in Ireland. The rest, as they say, is history. Just four years later, Katie would compete at the European Amateur Boxing Championships and also the World Amateur Championship. She won gold in the former, but lost in the quarterfinals in the latter. The following year, she got even better. At 2006 European Amateur Boxing Championships, she defended her crown. While at the 2006 World Amateur Championships, she became Ireland's first World Champion. She would defend that title for four consecutive editions between 2008 and 2014 As fate will have it, the 2012 London Olympic Games was the first time women's boxing will be included in the Games. It was a match made in heaven. Katie would win all her fights to become the first ever Olympic female lightweight champion. At her second Olympic Games in Rio in 2016, Katie would lose in the quarterfinals to Mira Porkeinen of Finland. She finished her amateur career with a record of 176 wins, 12 losses and one draw. In 2016, Katie turned professional and became the first female boxer to sign with Eddie Hearn. It would take her under a year to fight for the WBA female lightweight title, defeating two-weight world champion Anahi Sanchez in the process. In 2018, Katie unified the WBO and IBF titles by defeating Victoria Bustos via unanimous decision. In 2019, she captured the WBO title via TKO victory over Rose Volante. That same year, she became the first undisputed female lightweight champion defeating WBC champion Delphine Pursuun. Katie would defend an undisputed title seven times, including a blockbuster fight against seven-division champion Amanda Serrano. It was the first female fight to headline Madison Square Garden. Katie would eventually move up to super-lightweight and also capture the undisputed crown. A last fight against Flora Peely drew a crowd of 83,000 people at Crowe Park. Today, she is your mentor. And three lessons that I want you guys to learn from Katie Taylor. And the first lesson, guys, is that you must build your dream. Right? You must build your dream. I don't think this is something that can be overemphasized, right? I don't think it's something that can be overemphasized. And why do I say so?

I say so because, you see, if the dream is not yours, then it is difficult for you to take ownership of it, right? If the dream is not yours, it's difficult for you to take ownership of it. And I get the idea that a lot of people are hesitant to dream because, hey, what if I fail? What if it doesn't work out? What if things don't go according to plan? But you see, you're focusing on the negatives. You're not focusing on the possible. Katie Taylor, it was her dream to box on the grandest stage, especially at a time when female boxing was not the mainstay. She had to hide her hair, right? Had to hide her hair just to be able to fight guys because girls were not allowed to box, right? She also wanted to compete at the Olympic Games. It was a dream and it was something that she walked towards. So you see, you must learn to build your dream, guys. What dreams do you have for your sport? So everything that Katie Taylor has achieved now, in the sport of boxing, she recently retired 40 years old, I think only one professional defeat in her career, three time undisputed champion in two different weight classes, it couldn't have gotten better for her, Olympic champion as well, right?