Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn has expressed regret over not bringing Katie Taylor to GAA headquarters earlier, following extraordinary ticket demand for the Irish fighter’s farewell contest at Croke Park.
The 40-year-old will fulfil a lifelong dream when she takes to the ring in Dublin on Saturday night, seeking to become a three-time undisputed world champion against the undefeated Flora Pili.
A sell-out crowd of 80,000 is set to gather for the pioneering athlete’s final bout prior to retirement, though Hearn remains confident that vast numbers of additional tickets could easily have been sold.
Previous concerns regarding financial viability, substantial security expenses, and complex logistics had dissuaded the promoter from organising a Croke Park show headlined by Taylor—a hesitation he now reflects on with disappointment.
Hearn said: “If Croker would have originally gone ‘Yes, this is going to be massive’, I would have gone ‘Wow’ and we would have done it.
“But it was like, ‘I don’t know. Blimey, if they’re not sure, do we really want to be gambling with these costs?’.
“People can deflate your spirit, which is quite unusual for me, but they did deflate my spirit a little bit over the years because they made me question whether we could do it or if it would actually work.
“And I’m disappointed in myself, actually, that I allowed that to happen because maybe we could have done it earlier.
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“But then I didn’t have the confidence that I had going into it this time with (Irish promoter) Peter Aiken involved and the three Amanda Serrano fights.
“Croker helped out as well and they were fantastic in the end, but I never thought we’d do 40,000 tickets on a pre-sale. How many could we have done? I don’t know, maybe another 40, 50, 100,000?
“We’re getting hundreds of messages every day from people saying ‘Please, I want to bring my daughter’. It’s heartbreaking, in a way.”
Although the nation prepares to celebrate one of its most distinguished sporting icons, Hearn stressed that Taylor cannot permit the emotion of the evening to compromise her bid to claim the undisputed world light-welterweight title against her 29-year-old opponent.
Hearn said: “Katie’s fighting a young, strong girl who likes to trade, so there needs to be a switch from the euphoria and ‘This is going to be amazing’.
“Katie was saying she needs to prepare herself for war, because she can’t let this pass her by.
“It will be an all-out war because it’s the only way Katie knows how to fight. She’s not going to try and box and move, because she’ll want to leave it all in the ring.”
