Katie Taylor got off to an impressive start in her first professional fight on Saturday night.
She scored a third round knockout win over Karina Kopinska.
The transition from Amateur to Professional looks set to be a very successful one if Saturday is anything to go by.
Katie is set to fight again on Saturday week December 10th on the undercard for Anthony Joshua’s World Heavyweight Title Defence against Eric Molina.
Fighting regularly like that is something that we saw a young Mike Tyson doing and that fast tracked him to a World Title shot.
In recent years we have seen the likes of Ronda Rousey and Holly Holm transform the Women’s division in the UFC.
They have proven a point to the world that women’s UFC can be as exciting as any of the men’s division fights and Rousey in particular is now well known globally.
I believe that Katie Taylor can do the same for Women in Boxing.
She has the talent, the power and the technique to go on and become a multiple weight world champion and already has a huge fan base which was initially grown in the Amateur days.
I think that this is a smart bit of business that promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing has done, and smug and all as some people think he is, he gets big fights done and brings the fans what they want.
He obviously sees that Taylor has the potential to really put Women’s Boxing on the map and I am most definitely with him on that one.
Katie has said that she would love to be headlining fights in Ireland. And there’s no reason why she can’t.
Could you imagine a triple bill of World Title fights with fellow recently converted professionals Michael Conlan and Paddy Barnes?!
That’s something that I would absolutely relish and I think that it would attract the social supporters back to the Sport as well as the die hard’s who will always be there.
The big challenge with any sport for a promoter or organisation is to attract the ordinary Joe Soap and if this type of supporter can be drawn towards the sporting event then popularity of that Sport or event begins to boom.
With Boxing, people want to see knockouts and entertainment and in Katie Taylor we now have a professional boxer who can provide that day in and day out, and I certainly hope that the World embraces one of our national treasures as she embarks on her newfound journey to greatness.
