Katie Taylor's Farewell Fight at Croke Park: A Legacy in the Making
Katie Taylor will walk into Croke Park tomorrow night chasing the perfect ending. High above the canvas, in the Ard Chomhairle seats, a piece of Irish boxing history will be watching her every move.
Paddy Doherty, the last Irish fighter to box at Croke Park, will be back in the stadium he lit up 54 years ago. This time, he comes not with gloves and gumshield, but with his family and an invitation from Taylor’s camp.
For Doherty, it is a full-circle moment.
From Ali’s undercard to Taylor’s farewell
On 19 July 1972, Croke Park belonged to Muhammad Ali. The only time “the greatest” fought in Ireland, he stopped Al “Blue” Lewis in the 11th round, in front of 18,000 fans drawn as much by the spectacle as the sport.
Tucked onto that undercard was a light-middleweight from Ballyshannon, Co Donegal. Doherty took his chance, stopping Welshman Bobby Ruff in the second round. Ali took the headlines; Doherty took his own slice of history.
The show had been pulled together by Michael “Butty” Sugrue, the Kerry circus strongman turned boxing promoter, who somehow brought Ali to Dublin in a year when so much else was falling apart. The Five Nations Championship had been abandoned, Scotland and Wales refusing to travel to Dublin in one of the darkest years of the Troubles. Yet on that July night, Croke Park roared for boxing.
Doherty remembers it in flashes. The weigh-in at the Gresham Hotel. The noise. The chaos. And Ali himself.
“He tapped me on the head coming into the ring,” Doherty recalled. After the final bell, the crowd poured forward. “Most of the crowd came over the barrier into the ring. Even the security and the guards couldn’t keep them back, just to get to Ali.”
Tomorrow, the stadium will be packed in a way he never saw in 1972. Professional boxing returns to Croke Park for the first time since that Ali show, and Katie Taylor will perform in front of around 80,000 people – the biggest boxing crowd Ireland has ever seen.
A visit at the kitchen door
The link between eras tightened only recently, when Taylor and her long-time manager Brian Peters turned up at Doherty’s home in Donegal.
Doherty admitted he “couldn’t believe it.” Peters had called to say he was in Donegal. That same morning, Doherty’s wife spotted a familiar figure. “My wife said, ‘Katie Taylor’s after coming in past the house’. I couldn’t believe it.”
Taylor and Peters did more than pay their respects. They made sure he would be there to see her final act.
“They invited the whole lot of us on Saturday night. It was a nice surprise,” Doherty said. “He (Brian Peters) said, ‘I’ll see you in Croke Park’.”
For Doherty, Taylor’s impact stretches far beyond the ticket.
“What she has done for Irish boxing all over the world is remarkable,” he said. “Out from that, she’s a real lady.” He also reserved praise for Peters, describing what the manager has done for the sport as “fantastic”.
The old pro’s advice
Taylor’s last opponent will be 29-year-old French fighter Flora Pili, unbeaten and unscarred on paper. Doherty, who knows what it is to stand under the lights with a nation watching, believes experience will tilt the ring in Taylor’s favour.
He has even thought about what he’d say if he gets a quiet word before the first bell.
“If I’m talking to her before the fight, I’ll tell her, ‘if she keeps coming to her, to tie her up in knots ... let the referee do the breaking and get back for boxing’,” he said.
That is the voice of a man who learned his craft the hard way. Doherty started boxing in Ballyshannon at 11, climbed through the amateur ranks, and collected Ulster and Irish titles from juvenile right through to senior level. In 1970, he took Commonwealth Games bronze in Edinburgh, fighting for Northern Ireland thanks to his Fermanagh-born father.
As an Irish international amateur light-middleweight, he compiled 15 wins with just one defeat. The professional game beckoned, and in 1971 he moved to London and stepped into a new world.
His first taste of the Ali circus came that October, when he boxed on the undercard of Ali’s exhibition against Johnny “Gypsy” Frankham at the Royal Albert Hall. When Ali’s team drew up the Croke Park card the following summer, Doherty’s name was there again.
Injury cut his pro career short in his 20s. The gloves came off, the spotlight moved on. The memory of that Croke Park night never did.
One legacy meets another
Tomorrow, the old pro will sit in the stands and watch a different kind of trailblazer take her final bow in the same arena.
“I will be there for Katie Taylor; she’s so calm and nice ... a down-to-earth girl,” he said. “What she’s done for boxing will never be done again.”
Fifty-four years after Ali tapped him on the head on his way to the ring, Paddy Doherty will watch Katie Taylor walk out at Croke Park and try to leave the sport with the kind of ending every fighter dreams about, but almost none receive.
