Katie Taylor expected to announce retirement after Amanda Serrano fight
Katie Taylor's 2025 Croke Park window isn't just closing fast.
There doesn't seem any movement in recent weeks about pinning it down to a 2025 or early 2026 date, leading to speculation the Irish star will announce her retirement next month.
The 38 year-old, says insiders, is ready to call it a day in the aftermath of her next fight, win or lose, with Amanda Serrano at Madison Square Gardens on July 11.The Bray-native has previously said of fighting in Croke Park: "That would be the pinnacle of my career to have a chance to actually fight in Croke Park. I'm still hanging on to that hope, but we'll see what happens."But it's a narrative that hasn't sat well with the GAA who claim the Taylor camp have never come forward with a concrete proposal and/or a date."Katie Taylor is a magnificent athlete and I think everyone is very, very proud of what she's achieved as an athlete," said Croke Park Stadium Director Peter McKenna earlier this year."But to fill Croke Park with 80,000, you need an undercard, you need a whole razzmatazz to go with it .Those things can't be done in a short period of time."It is thought that were Taylor to take on another 2025 fight capable of attracting close to 80,000, it would be a September-October-November date against Clarissa Shields who won 2012 and 2016 Olympics gold medals and has a 16-0 professional record."The calendar," notes McKenna," really there's not a lot of space to say, 'yeah, we could fit it in on that weekend'. What time of the year would it be on? We have Oasis and Robbie Williams [in August]."Even getting an event management plan together, getting the City Council to approve it and so on, there'd be a fair bit of work in that. So I think it's a kite-flyer rather than genuine. I can't see it happening because we haven't heard about it."Taylor's forthcoming fight with Serrano will be shown on Netflix, a contest fight where the just-turned 38 year-old Irish girl will be marginal underdog on the bookies board, Serrano being priced in and around 3/4.Taylor will be defending WBA, IBF, WBC, WBO, Ring titles, taking in a 24 wins/one loss professional record which contains six knockouts. Her only defeat was against Chantelle Cameron in May 2023.This will be up against a 36 year-old who holds the similarly unified featherweight belts on the back of a 47 wins/three losses/one draw.The Taylor-Serrano bill will be MSG's first ever all-women's boxing event, also featuring undisputed super featherweight champion Alycia Baumgardner against Jennifer Miranda over 10 rounds.Chantelle Cameron, who lost last time out to Taylor, will fight Jessica Camera with Scotney-Mercado, Marshall-Green and Johnson-Metcalf also on the undercard.The ensemble of Cameron, Taylor, Serrano and Baumgardner represents four of the top six pound-for-pound women boxers in the world according to the three accepted list collators, Ring Magazine, ESPN and BoxRec.Taylor and Serrano first met at MSG in MSG in April 2022, the first women's fight to headline the historic boxing venue with Taylor winning by a split decision over 10 rounds.She also won the second fight, staged in November 2024 at the home of the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Texas, by a unanimous decision, again over 10 rounds.Fights that have engendered a great animosity between the duo not least as Serrano claims she should have won both times.But Taylor, speaking at the weigh-in for this fight in April concluded: "The first two fights were absolutely epic, two of the most exciting fights of the year, and I'm pretty sure number three is going to deliver again."I am 2-0 against Amanda. She has to respect the decisions. If you look at those fights, you can clearly see that I won those two fights. It's insane. It's ridiculous really. It's really, really insane that she thinks she won those fights."Of course I won. It was an amazing fight. We've had two of the best fights in the history of boxing. Two very, very close fights, but I think that the margins at the top are always very tiny, but I did come out as the deserved winner."I am 2-0 here and I'm in the driver's seat. That's only right at the end of the day. Amanda needs this fight a lot more than I do. I have a long history of big fights against big names and a line of people queued up to fight me for the payday."You need this fight a lot more than I do."You know that. This is another legacy-building fight for myself and Amanda but I just want to prove myself once more."Serrano said: "She has to prove to everybody and to herself that she beat me, convincingly. Both those fights."And I need to go out there and prove to those judges like, 'come on - what are you watching?' So it's going to be a great fight between both of us. We're not going to disappoint."
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