Katie Taylor Conversation With Dan Rafael 8 28 26 | Fight Freaks Unite Podcast

Dan Rafael (0:01)

It was my great privilege to welcome you to our podcast and our YouTube channel this week. It is none other than the legendary Katie Taylor. Katie, you're getting ready for what you say will be your final fight, your retirement fight. I'm very, very pleased to be able to talk to you about that. Welcome to the show and glad to talk to you again. You got to be pretty excited for this big event.

Katie Taylor (0:21)

Yeah, thank you so much, Dan. Yeah, it's been a very exciting few months just preparing for this, and I'm just blown away by the support really, I'm blown away by this opportunity. I got a chance to end my career in Croke Park, of all places, Ireland's most iconic arena.

I'm just looking at the amount of tickets that were sold in pretty much 70 minutes, 80,000 tickets, so it's going to be a huge night for myself and what a fairytale end to end my career this way.

Dan Rafael (0:48)

Absolutely. I'll tell the folks the specifics. You are, of course, still the unified Women's Junior Welterweight World Champion. You're going to be taking on Flora Pili for not only your titles, but also for the vacant WBC title that they had made you champion in recess after you decided to take a little break. You'll fight her September 5th on the zone, as you mentioned, Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland, your home country. What you say will be your final fight of your 10-year career.

I want to start by asking you, how did you decide to make the decision that this will be it, that you would retire? That's a hard decision no matter what career somebody is involved in.

Katie Taylor (1:24)

Yeah, definitely. I think this has just been such a long and hard career. I've been boxing since I was nine years of age and I had a very long amateur career as well. But I think after the last fight against Serrano, I was thinking, what else is there to chase after really?

What could get bigger in a massive square garden? The only thing that I could think of was Croke Park. I actually made the decision after the last fight, I was saying to my team afterwards in the hotel, that this could be it guys unless I get Croke Park. What an amazing career. Thank you so much. And I think it was around six or seven months ago, my manager Brian rang me up and said, okay, I'm gonna give Croke Park one last shot. And he managed to get this over the line along with Eddie Herr, of course, as well, and everybody else involved in this, Peter Aiken and Peter McKenna.

So this for me was just the only thing that could top up what happened in my career so far. And I didn't think there's anything else for me to chase after.

Dan Rafael (2:25)

So when you fight this fight, of course, if you are the winner, you'll become the undisputed junior welterweight champion for the second time, a big accomplishment. You really should still be it. But as I said, you ended up vacating the WBC while you took your sabbatical. The other organizations did not do that. So that would make you a two-time junior welterweight undisputed champion. You were, of course, a long-time undisputed champion in the lightweight division. Three-time undisputed is a pretty big thing, especially when there's four belts to collect.

What would that mean to you to become a three-time undisputed and walk away as the champion?

Katie Taylor (2:57)

Amazing. What an amazing privilege. What a way to end my career as well, to become an undisputed champion again. Like I said, this is not easy to do. To have all the belts at the one time was a very, very difficult task. But you understand I have a very real life fighter in front of me as well. I have to prepare well for this. It's all been exciting about my last fight and about Croke Park. But over the last few months, I've just been locked down and trained hard for this fight. I have a fight to win. I have a very real life challenger in front of me as well, and Flora Pili. So this is not going to be an easy fight.

But to end my career as you understand the champion, this is like a fairy tale ending for me really.

Dan Rafael (3:40)

When you talk about Croke Park, which we mentioned a few times, it will be the venue, the iconic, we call it American football. You just call it football.

Katie Taylor (3:49)

We call it soccer.