Croke Park Hosts Historic Boxing Event for Katie Taylor
Croke Park swaps rock anthems for ring walks this weekend, as the home of Gaelic games prepares to stage what many see as the biggest night in Irish boxing history.
Seven days after Bon Jovi brought down the house, the stadium’s vast pitch is being reshaped for Katie Taylor’s showdown with Flora Pili – a night that will close a circle stretching back more than half a century.
It is 54 years since professional boxing last took over this arena, when Muhammad Ali faced Al “Blue” Lewis here in July 1972. Since then Croke Park has hosted Garth Brooks, Oasis and a roll call of global music acts. Boxing, though, has been absent. Until now.
From Bon Jovi to the biggest bout in town
The turnaround has been relentless. As soon as the extravagant Bon Jovi stage started coming down, two separate crews moved in to rip up the concert layout and rebuild the venue as a fight stadium.
“It’s very similar to what we do at concerts,” said Croke Park stadium and commercial director Peter McKenna, speaking to RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland. “It’s in the middle of the park this time. I think the issues really were getting time to take down the whole Bon Jovi setup, putting in the boxing setup and then putting 12,000 seats onto the stadium ground.
“We have two crews working really hard on it. Having seen it this morning, it looks like we’re in great shape and ahead of schedule.”
The pitch, usually a cathedral of hurling and football, will now carry a very different kind of theatre. A ring at its heart. Banks of temporary seating rising around it. A stadium built for roar and colour ready to amplify a single fighter’s final walk.
A festival built around a fighter
This is not just a fight card. It’s a full-blown event.
Families and children are expected to pour through the turnstiles. Organisers have stacked the evening with entertainment designed to hold the crowd long before the first bell and long after the last undercard bout.
“This is where Matchroom Boxing and Peter Aiken (of Aiken Promotions) have worked really well together,” McKenna explained. “They both know what they do very, very well. So they’re going to intersperse the boxing card with musicians like The Mary Wallopers and Westlife. And then there’ll be pyrotechnics and various other displays during the course of the evening.
“The whole thing is to keep the crowd entertained up until the big moment, which is the ring walk.”
Westlife top the bill on the music side, with other acts and visual spectacles slotted between the fights. It’s a model borrowed from major world title nights, but scaled up for a national occasion.
The ring walk and the release
For McKenna, the night pivots on one stretch of time.
“It’s a big feature of international boxing and world title fights, where the challenger gets exposed first and then the champion is given the adulation of the crowd,” he said.
“There’s a 10-minute interlude there where people can really get to celebrate Katie and cheer her on before she gets into the ring and then prepares for the fight.”
Ten minutes to let the place erupt. Ten minutes to acknowledge a career that has dragged Irish boxing into the mainstream and filled arenas from New York to London. Ten minutes for a country to say thank you.
That window, though, brings its own complications.
“That itself brings its own logistics because boxing bouts don’t have a defined time like we have in our own games,” McKenna noted. “As soon as she gets into the ring, we will have the stadium prepared to exit, if you like, because the fight can end very quickly and then people want to go home. So it’s logistically slightly different than we would for a match or for a concert.”
Every route in and out, every steward, every timing cue has to account for the fact that the main event could be over in a flash.
A sellout few saw coming
The forecast looks kind. The stage – this time a square one – is set. The demand has stunned even those at the centre of it.
“It’s hugely exciting,” McKenna said. “I think it’s an event that’s captured the imagination of everybody.
“Nobody, apart from maybe Katie and those close to her – Peter Aiken and Eddie Hearn – foreseen that this would sell out. I certainly didn’t see it selling out, but it has.”
Tickets have gone not just to hardened boxing followers but to casual fans, curious onlookers and those who simply want to be able to say: I was there.
“There’s people coming from all different perspectives on this, die-hard boxing fans, Katie supporters and people who just don’t want to miss out on what’s going to be a very unique international event, celebrating one of the greatest Irish boxers of all time.”
Croke Park has seen All-Ireland finals, iconic concerts and historic visits. On this night, it becomes something else again – the backdrop to a champion’s last walk, and a stadium-sized ovation for an Irish great.
