Katie Taylor made her final ringwalk and as I looked into the crowd behind me, tears rolled down cheeks from men and women.
Just because we predicted this would be emotional, we didn’t know quite how remarkable it was going to be.
Nothing but Katie mattered and the date will be seared into Irish folklore: September 5, 2026. It was special, and that is not a cliché or hyperbole.
An hour or so before her final walk to the ring, Matchroom’s Jamie Ward interviewed Katie Taylor in the dressing room and the images were shown on the big screens, there was the first ear-splitting scream of the night from the legions of fans.
“All of the hard work has been done, I’ll just go out there and enjoy myself,” she said, and the rapture in the audience picked up once more.
Promoter Eddie Hearn, then interviewed on the stage where all the fighters but Taylor made their entrance at the historic Croke Park, talked of Taylor “taking the roof off this place”, which was not lost on me being seated so high up in the sky in the media box that I could clearly see there was no roof.
“We’ve got one more job to do, that’s win this fight tonight…. She’s nervous, she’s about to walk out for one final time, she’s warmed up for one final time.”
“This is a moment that we shall savour forever. Let’s raise the roof for a true Irish girl.”
*
While the ending of Paddy Donovan’s fight with Tyrone McKenna was anti-climactic, Donovan had been well in control, and he’d decked the Belfastman early on.
Donovan split open McKenna’s eye with a counter left and the doctor almost immediately stopped it with less than 30 seconds left in the fourth.
Donovan had received a superb ovation both before and after the fight.
In the contest prior to the Limerick man’s win, Southampton’s Taylor Bevan had been too sharp for Emmet Brennan, flooring the Irishman five times for the win of his career to date.
The fifth, final and hardest knockdown was unnecessary as there was no way back for Brennan by that point.
Still, it was before the heavyweight bout between Dave Allen and Thomas Carty that the atmosphere started to buzz, with well-known hits and Irish folk songs bringing the crowd toward an inevitable climax that would peak with the ringwalk and the heroine of the piece having her hand raised.
It’s not often Dave Allen is booed when he’s announced, but there was understandably a warm ovation for Dublin’s own Carty.
It was getting cold by this point. Various media members had scurried off to grab small bowls of chips and even a late coffee, given the heavyweights started at 8.50pm.
By 8.53pm Carty was flat on his back on the floor outside the ring and no one seemed to really know what had happened.
Allen was left alone inside the ropes, Carty was given oxygen and the crowd initially hummed with curiosity before big-screen replays showed Allen had clubbed Carty on the back of the head and the Irishman had then lurched headfirst out of the ring and all the way down to the floor.
That fight was all over in 82 seconds on the recommendation of the ringside doctor.
It looked as though Allen wanted to fight on but, once he was able, Carty trudged back to the locker rooms and the Croke Park party continued for everyone else, but not for Allen and there was, of course, no party for Carty.
*
I thought the fans were here for the boxing but even through the main support bouts there were rows of empty seats and, as I went out to the concourse between fights, thousands of fans, many wearing Katie Taylor T-shirts, scarves and hats, queued for food, drinks and Katie Taylor merchandise. They were here for one thing.
There was a long pause and then the crowd’s real co-main event started when Westlife came on and unexpectedly brought the audience to its feet. Boxing on X might have mocked it, but there were no audible complaints from the 83,000 who lit up Croke Park with their phone lights in their thousands to You Raise Me Up. It was one of the most un-boxing moments I had seen. But this was not about boxing. This was about paying homage – and not to the famous Irish group. It was about Katie Taylor and how she had raised up a nation. It wasn’t about a fight. It was about saying a heartfelt thank you.
The band performed two songs and then the lights cut, the concert was over and fight night was upon us. The fact that one contest had been cut short and another had ended bizarrely after less than two minutes meant nothing.
The “where-were-you moment” was about to start.
Taylor’s opponent Flora Pili, from France, came out and soon after her ringwalk music was drowned out by the “Ole Ole” chants of the Irish. Instead of watching the Frenchwoman’s journey to the ring, many craned their necks to the corner of the stadium that had all night been reserved for only Taylor. The Irish star’s walk from the inner sanctum of the stadium was greeted by another roar and when Pili’s music stopped, the sense of anticipation was palpable. The stadium was bathed in neon emerald green, and then Taylor’s music hit – All Hail King Jesus – and she made her slow, measured final walk to the ring with fireworks and pyro.
*
I can’t lie, I felt it even though I had not expected to. But this was not for me, of course, or my colleagues on press row. I wanted to see what it meant to the Irish people and I nudged Tom Ivers, my friend and colleague next to me, and pointed to the row of men and women behind us who were weeping. Two women were crying uncontrollably, dabbing their eyes in their tricolour Katie flags while the men looked towards the ring through watery eyes. Another man, his wife and their daughter, held hands, transfixed by what they were witnessing. They were seemingly trying not to crack but nonetheless hooked on the emotion of it.
These weren’t VIPs. These were the people of Ireland who’d won the virtual ticket lottery and were quickest on the phonelines to get in.
We were a long way from the centre circle, but they were there, walking with Katie. This was their “I was there” moment and they were sharing it with the nation’s idol.
As for the fight, the chorus was interchangeable between “Ole Ole” and “There’s Only One Katie Taylor.”
It was a celebration, not a fight.
