Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn spoke to Ring Magazine today after the announcement of Katie Taylor’s farewell fight at Croke Park in Ireland. Here Hearn reflects on the difficulty in making this homecoming fight for Taylor and how grateful he is for Taylor and all fans to get what he promises to be a night to remember.
“We kind of went into this with a ‘Katie Taylor attitude,’ which was a kind of refuse to be beaten attitude, never say die, there’s nothing you can’t overcome,” Hearn said of negotiating
the venue. “She retired, really, four of five months ago, went to lunch and said ‘I’m done because if you can’t do Croke Park, I’ll never fight again.’
“At that point we accepted we’re not going to do Croke Park…[After some time] she got in touch and was like ‘I want to fight again, I want to do Croke Park, is there nothing you can do?’ I was like ‘look, let’s go again’ and we tightened our braces and so did Croke Park…and we just found a way.
“I’m so glad we did because similarly with Tyson Fury against Anthony Joshua, those incredible journeys, we would’ve always been kicking ourselves that we never got Croke Park done and AJ vs Fury. So this will be incredible, this will be like nothing you’ve ever seen in boxing before. It is the biggest female boxing event of all time…It’s the biggest crowd ever for an individual female athlete, and it’s one of the biggest events in Irish sporting history and it will be a night that people here will never forget.”
Hearn then dug a little deeper into how hard it was to make this event happen at this particular venue.
“It’s extremely challenging. At first you feel that there isn’t the support that she deserves, and I was vocal early on talking about the costs of Croke Park, kind of like a lack of desire from the government to bring the fights here and I probably went off on my usual tirade instead of probably just staying with it a little bit more.
“[The logistical hurdles/expenses are significant] and it is what it is. And that’s when we have to look at it and sort of say it may not be the biggest event for us financially but what it will be is a night that we’ll never forget at a moment that’s very important for Matchroom Boxing, for Katie Taylor, of course for the country, for the brand and everything. These nights hardly ever come around, let alone once in a lifetime.
“It’ll be a celebration of not just Irish boxing and Katie Taylor, but Irish sport, music, heritage — I mean, it’ll be a whole ‘nother experience, this event.”
