History of Women's Boxing: That Has Fought All the Battles

Please! This column begins with a very big and heartfelt request: Get a little bit involved in the personality and life achievements of a 40-year-old woman from Ireland.

Katie Taylor ended her career as a professional boxer on Saturday evening, and every detail I will note in this short column points to the importance of this athlete.

80,000 people came to Dublin's Croke Park, one of the largest sports arenas in Europe was packed. So many people had never come to a live women's boxing match. Taylor's walk-in was performed live by Westlife with "Flying Without Wings", and Taylor marched alone in a robe.

The Irish television commentator expressed the meaning very succinctly. "She first entered a ring at the age of ten, dressed as a boy. Now, thirty years later she is dressed as the Queen of Ireland."

In fact, the recent history of women's boxing can be told along Taylor's CV: She first registered as "K. Taylor" in 1996 so that no one would notice that she was a girl. She hid her long hair under her head protection. When the first legal, i.e. officially licensed, women's fight was held in Dublin in 2001, 15-year-old Katie Taylor was in the ring. In 2005 she became European champion for the first time, in 2006 she became world champion for the first time, and in 2012 Taylor became the first boxing Olympic champion in sports history.

As a professional, she won the first fight between two female boxers, which was held as the main event in New York's legendary Madison Square Garden. The fact that she did this against world-class boxer Amanda Serrano is another detail worth highlighting in this biography. “Above all,” as boxing expert Bertram Job points out in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, “Taylor showed no fear of the so-called ‘signature fights’ against similarly highly rated competition.” It was her fights against Serrano, Delfine Persoon or the British Chantelle Cameron - Taylor's only defeat of her career, which she made up for in the rematch - that "brought global attention to women's boxing".

Well, at the end of her career she is “undisputed champion”, i.e. world champion of all important associations who has not been questioned in the slightest by anyone (she won the last title, that of the WBC, on Saturday in her last fight against the Frenchwoman Flora Pili). Most recently she competed in the super lightweight category, in earlier stages of her career she also competed in the lightweight division, where, of course, she also held the title of all major associations, i.e. “undisputed champion”.

30 years of boxing, 20 years of professional boxing, always at the highest level. This incredible career came to an end on Saturday with an unprecedented show. In Ireland, Taylor, who goes by the nickname “The Bray Bomber” after her hometown, is a superstar. Namely - this also says a lot about the perception of great sport in other cultures - a star who is recognized by the entire nation.

After her historic Olympic victory - the IOC had simply banned women's boxing until 2012 - she published her autobiography, “My Olympic Dream”. It was named Sports Book of the Year. And this summer, Trinity College in Dublin awarded her an honorary doctorate because, as they say, she will “go down in history as one of the greatest sportswomen of all time.”

So what does Katie Taylor have to say about this final fight? “That night was everything I expected and more.” Something similar can probably be said about her career.