At peace, Katie Taylor takes in the ambiance from the Mondrian Park Avenue hotel rooftop in New York City. The swanky terrace, where hors d’oeuvres are being served on this still-sunny spring evening, offers quite the change-up from the grueling boxing gym where she has trained the past nine weeks.
For a moment, the unified world lightweight champion breaks her calm and feels tingly reflecting on her path to this point.
“This can’t get any bigger than this,” Taylor told Sporting News. “It’s absolutely huge. I’m nearly kind of pinching myself that I’m here.”
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Taylor, 32, is on the brink of becoming just third female boxer to be crowned undisputed champ in the four-belt era. Welterweight ruler Cecilia Braekhus was the first to do it and Claressa Shields followed just last month in the middleweight division. If Taylor can defeat WBC lightweight titleholder Delfine Persoon at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night as part of the Anthony Joshua-Andy Ruiz Jr. card then she, too, will cement her fighting legacy, airtight with greatness.
“This is the pinnacle of boxing, really, and this is definitely the biggest night of my career by far,” Taylor said, just days away from trying to realize her goal. “To do it in a place like Madison Square Garden, 'The Mecca of Boxing,' is absolutely huge for me. This is more than a dream for me.”
Where the men — especially in the welterweight and heavyweight divisions — struggle to even make a unifying fight, Taylor has been on a brisk path of picking up hardware.
After becoming the WBA world lightweight champion in October 2017, Taylor added the IBF strap to her name just two fights later in April 2018. Following three consecutive defenses of both titles, the Irish fighter added the WBO championship with an emphatic ninth-round TKO of Brazilian Rose Volante on March 15 in Philadelphia.
👑👑👑 3 OUT OF 4! @KatieTaylor just needs one last piece to solve the Undisputed puzzle!
— Sky Sports Boxing (@SkySportsBoxing) March 16, 2019
🥊 What a performance 💥 pic.twitter.com/LeFJRfnC5j
Exactly a month later, the fight between her and Belgium’s Persoon was announced for undisputed glory.
“It definitely has come about very fast,” Taylor says.
MORE: Persoon: 'Katie Taylor has everything to lose'
Her Matchroom Boxing promoter, Eddie Hearn, can’t believe it, either. He still remembers how Taylor slid in his DMs, asking him to promote her.
“She sent me a direct message on Twitter saying ‘You might have heard of me. I’ve won everything you could win as an amateur and I want to turn professional. To do that, I need a great promoter and I’d like to talk to you,’” Hearn told SN at the Mondrian, recalling the outreach from the 2012 Olympic gold medalist well. “I was like, ‘I’m not really in women’s boxing, but she’s a legend. I’ve got to meet her.’
“Within 10 minutes, I was like, ‘I have to be involved in this woman’s career.’”
That was in 2016, before Taylor went pro and went on to defeat the tough likes of Anahi Sanchez, Jessica McCaskill — who just became a unified super featherweight champion last weekend — Cindy Serrano, Eva Wahlstrom and Volante. And that brings us to the undisputed summit of sweet science excellence, which came about expeditiously as well.
“I’m so grateful, but it’s definitely a lot easier to make these fights in the women’s game because they’re not contracted to certain TV stations or whatnot,” Taylor said. “I can’t imagine how frustrating it could be when those fights can’t be made — the likes of Anthony Joshua, (Deontay) Wilder, Tyson Fury, that type of situation.”
Hearn hopes the men see Taylor become undisputed champ and are implored to handle negotiations with urgency so that they too could be on a similar path.
“It’s very refreshing, isn’t it?” Hearn said of Taylor and Persoon coming to terms swiftly. “It’s what we’re trying to do in the heavyweight division, it’s what we’re trying to do in the middleweight division, but in the women’s, it does seem to happen a little bit faster.
“It shows you how easy it can be done,” he added. “The difficulty with this fight is Persoon is a star in Belgium, so we had to dangle the carrot of the money, the Garden, the belts.”
All that bait worked, as the 34-year-old Persoon (43-1, 18 KOs) hauls more than three times as many fights as Taylor (13-0, 6 KOs) into this fight. She also has the lopsided math in her favor, entering the bout with one belt and the opportunity to leave with five, including The Ring title.
That alone is why Persoon believes all the pressure is on Taylor.
“We hope we win the fight, but if I lose it's no problem for me,” Persoon told SN just before entering fight week. “I'll come back to Belgium and go to work as a police officer and I have my job, my security and my money every month. For Katie, boxing is her job. If she loses it's a big difference for her, it won't be good for her job. So, for me, I have nothing to lose. Katie Taylor has everything to lose.”
MORE: For Katie Taylor, it all starts with pre-fight prayer
Taylor knows it. The last thing she’d want is to falter and have to climb back up the boxing ranks when she’s so close to reaching her ultimate goal. That’s precisely why she isn’t taking Persoon lightly, having scouted the Belgian fighter shrewdly.
“She’s tall, she’s strong, she’s awkward. She’s the type of opponent that’s hard to look well against at times,” Taylor says. “It could be a very, very physical fight, but I’m prepared for this type of challenge. I’ve put myself through the trenches day in and day out the last few months in training camp and I’m definitely ready for Saturday night.”
A win and the newly minted undisputed champion can seek a super fight with Braekhus or seven-division world champion Amanda Serrano, who Hearn says already has a deal in place to honor and fight Taylor.
“If all goes well,” Taylor says, “Amanda Serrano is definitely the fight I want next.”
Taylor, of course, only reveals this with some questioning from SN. She's locked in on Persoon solely as of now.
“I’ve never met a more driven individual, a more focused individual, a better ambassador, a nicer person, a person who’s more at peace with herself,” Hearn said of Taylor. “She has three things in her life: Boxing, her faith and her family. That is it.”
Outside of the gym and ring, you’ll see Taylor gush about being a doting aunt to her three nieces, one of which is a new addition.
She could see herself as a mom someday, but well after she’s done leaving no pages unturned in her fight book.
“I’m definitely open-minded about those things, about starting my own family and stuff. But right now, I’m just completely focused on this career, on this sport,” she says.
“I could hardly look after myself, never mind a few kids,” she adds, cracking a smile.
“Right now, I’m completely focused on this sport and trying to make history.”
Saturday, June 1 could be her most historic to date.
