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Katie Taylor will have her next and final fight against Flora Pili at Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland, on September 5, BoxingScene understands.
The contest, which will be formally announced at Croke Park on Friday June 5, will mark Taylor’s third reign as undisputed champion if she’s victorious. The 39-year-old currently holds the WBO, IBF and WBA belts in the junior welterweight class and the contest against Pili, 12-0 (2 KOs), will be for the vacant WBC title.
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Taylor, 25-1 (6 KOs), has done it all in the sport. A five-time world championship gold medallist and 2012 Olympic champion in the amateurs, Taylor went on to spearhead a new era for women’s boxing as a professional.
After persuading Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn that she was worth a contract in the paid ranks, she waved goodbye to amateur boxing in 2016. She won her first world title, the WBA belt at lightweight, the following year when she outpointed Anahi Ester Sanchez on the undercard of Anthony Joshua-Carlos Takam at Cardiff, Wales’ Principality Stadium. It would be on another Joshua-headlined event, when he lost to Andy Ruiz Jnr in New York, that Taylor would achieve undisputed status for the first time, beating Define Persoon in a firefight over 10 rounds.
She would remain unbeaten until a move to junior welterweight, in May 2023, saw her lose to Chantelle Cameron over 10 rounds in a bid for all four belts. Taylor, though widely written off beforehand, gained revenge six months later to win titles in her second weight class.
Since then, she has twice defeated Amanda Serrano over 10 rounds to put her 3-0 up in a historic rivalry that began in April 2022 when Taylor, following one of the greatest of all contests, defeated Serrano at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Further noteworthy scalps for Taylor include Persoon in a rematch, Jennifer Han, Natasha Jonas, Miriam Gutierrez, Christina Linardatou, Eva Wahlstrom, and Jessica McCaskill.
Pili, 28, doesn't have anything like such a glittering back catalogue. From Saint-Avold, Moselle in France, she turned professional in 2019 and was French junior welterweight champion within three years. The European championship followed in 2023 and, most recently, in December last year, she claimed the lightly regarded IBO belt with victory over Jelena Janicijevic via 10-round majority decision.
Taylor, who has long dreamed of headlining an event at Croke Stadium, the 82,000-seater national stadium of Ireland, will represent a huge step up. But then this event, a farewell to Taylor and all she has done for the sport in which she’s thrived, was only ever going to be about one person.
Matt Christie, a lifelong fight fan, has worked in boxing for more than 20 years. He left Boxing News in 2024 after 14 years, nine of which were spent as editor-in-chief. Before that, he was the producer of weekly boxing show “KOTV.” Now the co-host of “The Opening Bell” podcast and regularly used in the UK as a pundit, Matt was named as the Specialist Correspondent of the Year at the prestigious Sports Journalism Awards in 2021, which was the seventh SJA Award he accepted during his stint in the hot seat at Boxing News. The following year, he was inducted into the British Boxing Hall of Fame. He is a member of the BWAA and has been honored several times in their annual writing awards.