“Did ya enjoy that, did ya?”
So said Katie Taylor when asked about her whirlwind last 10 seconds in the ring after two and a half decades of near faultless excellence.
The fight had been petering out to an inevitable Taylor victory after a low-key final couple of rounds.
With the clock winding down and her more than two decade long boxing career in its dying seconds, she decided she was going to finish in a manic frenzy of swinging arms.
Her opponent appeared a little startled by the change in gear but managed to survive and stay on her feet until the bell came to her rescue.
The pair embraced immediately on the closing bell, after which Taylor cast her eyes skywards knowing that this was a full stop on her long career.
“I think I was trying to put the pressure on in the last round but I couldn’t get close to her. She was a very awkward opponent actually.
“I think the last 10 seconds before the bell rang, I said, why not, I’m just going to try to swing and punch myself out for the last 10 seconds. The last 10 seconds of my life in the ring.
“Looking back on my last 30 years in the ring, from the first time I stepped into a boxing ring until tonight, it’s been absolutely amazing.
“I wanted to leave it all in the ring. I have no regrets looking back on my whole career.”
Taylor radiated contentment as she and her team arrived into the press conference to the sound of applause not long before 1am on Sunday morning.
With no worlds left to conquer in the ring, she was, she said, looking forward to retirement and the chance to relax.
She even appears to be coming into her own as a press conference performer just at the moment she’s no longer professionally mandated to appear at them. Eddie Hearn noted as much, with pretend ruefulness.
Her enduring popularity – both inside and outside Ireland – and her thoughts on it, was the theme behind many of the questions.
“I actually don’t like controversy, I don’t like the limelight. I don’t like being the centre of attention. It’s funny that I’m actually in this position,” Taylor said.
“And boxing is such a dark world at times. I’m probably the person least likely to be involved in this sport but here I am. I certainly don’t like all the trash-talk and all the stuff that comes with it.
“Thankfully, I’ve never had to trash-talk or talk crap about anybody to actually succeed in this sport. I just let my excellence do my talking. I always let my boxing do the talking throughout my whole amateur career.
“I’ve always felt that was the best way to open doors for women’s boxing when women’s boxing wasn’t accepted when I was a teenager. I was determined very early on in my career not to talk but to show.”
Croke Park had transmogrified into a boxing venue for the first time since 1972. It had a hallucinogenic feel to those who were more used to the stadium in its more regular guise at the height of summer.
The green sward was covered under a bed of grey temporary flooring, the ring plonked in midfield and surrounded by seating. There was a small stage on the Hogan Stand side, in front of the Ard Comhairle.
Jerry Grogan had been replaced on the announcements by a chap with a baritone American voice.
Throughout the night, there was a constant drumbeat of video messages from Irish sporting royalty paying tribute to Taylor and wishing her the best for her retirement fight. Barry McGuigan from a park somehow, Brian O’Driscoll from his couch.
Katie McCabe and Rory McIlroy both received strikingly loud cheers – though the biggest of all was reserved for the Madrid slayer, Troy Parrott.
The three fights immediately preceding the main event hadn’t gone the distance. The last fight prior to Taylor-Pili had lasted just 82 seconds and ended in very bizarre fashion.
This all happened nearly a full hour before Taylor was due on stage and there were fears that Westlife were going to have to perform a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody to fill the time. In the end, the PA system just blasted out Wonderwall and Zombie.
Taylor’s ring-walk set her apart from the rest of the fighters as she was the only combatant to walk around in front of the Davin Stand and approach the ring from that direction.
There was some intrigue about her ring-walk song. We’d heard several airings of ‘Grace’ and ‘Put ‘Em Under Pressure’ already but Taylor walked out to ‘Hail Jesus you’re my King’, another nod to her Christian faith which she has always placed front and centre in the wake of every fight.
(Hearn did say afterwards, “every time she picks a song, we’re like, ‘can’t you do Zombie?'”, which drew a laugh from Taylor).
The Bray woman was pleased to be asked about the importance of her faith in the post-fight press conference.
“It’s a great question. Life is full of ups and downs. During personal hard times, I clung onto my faith. The word of God sustains you during those times.
“It sustained me during the heartbreak of the Rio Olympics and after the Chantelle Cameron loss. From a young age, I fell in love with the word of God.
“I’ve tried to hold my integrity in place throughout my whole career. And look at what God has done, he’s done the impossible in my life time and time again. I’m giving him all the glory and the honour for all that I’ve achieved.”
In the protracted lead-in to her final fight, Taylor indicated that the normalisation and mainstreaming of girls and women’s boxing as being the most important aspect of her legacy.
On Jones’s Road before the fight, former Olympian and celebrated high performance coach Billy Walsh predicted that the spectacle of Taylor fighting in Croke Park would hopefully spark another explosion in young girls and boys taking up the sport.
Would she like to get involved in coaching now she’s finished in the ring? Specifically, in Ireland?
“I’d love to stay involved in boxing in some way,” Taylor said. “I am living in Connecticut as well so I don’t know that will work with Irish boxing. I’m trying to convince my husband to move back home to Ireland with me. I’m not sure that’s going down very well!
“I would love to stay involved in the sport in some way. It would be very strange for me not to be involved since this has been my life for the last 30 years.”
What next? Brian Peters is busy preparing a stage play called ‘Her Story’ – the first half will consist of a theatrical production between Peters himself and Andrew Flynn, the director of Theatre at the Galway Arts Centre, while the second half will consist of Steve Bunce interviewing Taylor.
Taylor herself in looking forward to being able to kick back for a little while. “My whole life has been one big training camp. Training camp after training camp after training camp. I’m actually going to have the freedom to do what I want and enjoy the fruits of my labour.”
Whatever about the stage play, who’s going to play Taylor in the inevitable biopic?
“Dunno, Saoirse McHugh, maybe?” said Taylor. “She’s has to start working on her neck though. She has a bit of a skinny neck. And I’ve a big fat neck.”