Katie Taylor's Farewell: Chaos in the Ring with Carty and Allen
On a night built to crown a legend, chaos stole the undercard.
More than 83,000 Irish fans had poured into Croke Park, the old bowl humming for Katie Taylor’s farewell. Before she walked, the stage belonged to heavyweight hope Thomas Carty and cult British brawler Dave Allen – a local prospect against a seasoned survivor, Ireland against England, the kind of matchup that usually simmers before it explodes.
It barely had time to boil.
Eighty seconds into Round 1, Carty disappeared through the ropes and out of the ring in a scene that left the stadium stunned and the fight declared a no-contest.
A fall no one saw coming
The opening exchanges looked exactly as Carty had imagined them. The Dubliner, 11-1 with 9 knockouts, let his hands go, backed by a crowd that roared at every feint. Then came the clinches, the messy territory where Allen has made a career of turning clean fights into rough nights.
Carty later told Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show” that he felt a shot to the back of the head in the first clinch and tried to shrug it off. Seconds later, he says another punch landed in almost the same spot.
“Next thing I knew I was upside down, falling out of the ring,” he said.
He remembers flashes. Hitting something – “a bench or something” – on the way down. Then the ground. Then faces. Dozens of them.
“The whole thing happened so fast — I just remember looking up, and there were like 20 people,” Carty said. “People in the ring looking down, photographers looking, ringside doctors looking, about 20 different people talking, and my coach was there as well.”
The fall left him with injuries to the back of his head and neck. He says he tried to get up, tried to continue, but his leg was trapped under a stool. By then, the ringside doctor had seen enough. Carty stayed down outside the ropes, the referee waved it off, and the chaos moved from the ring apron to the rulebook.
Confusion in the ring, fury in the stands
Allen, a veteran of every kind of strange night boxing can offer, looked as baffled as anyone.
“At the time, I weren’t really sure what was going off,” he admitted. “It was half a round, and he went flying out of the ring. Weren’t really sure what was going off, weren’t sure if I was going to get disqualified, weren’t sure if I won the fight — weren’t really sure at all.”
The referee, the ringside physician, and the local commission huddled while the crowd grew restless. On the big screens, the replay rolled. Allen’s right hands around the back of Carty’s head played in slow motion. The reaction was instant: a wall of boos from the home crowd.
The stakes in that huddle were clear. If the referee ruled the shots legal and the fall a consequence of them, Allen could walk away with a bizarre early stoppage win. If he judged the punches to the back of the head as intentional and directly responsible for the injury, Carty might be awarded a highly contentious victory.
Instead, the referee threaded the needle. He called it an unintentional accident. No winner. No loser. No contest.
Rough or dirty?
The result did little to calm the debate.
Carty stopped short of accusing Allen of deliberately fouling him, but he did not spare criticism for what he saw as unnecessary shots.
“I don't know [if he did it on purpose],” Carty said. “I don't think he necessarily said, 'Right, I'm going to punch Thomas on the back of the head.' But that's what happened.
“I think [he was trying to utilize], like, old man tactics. He was obviously trying to clip me around the back of the ear, but it was just unnecessary, man. Completely unnecessary.”
Allen pushed back at the idea that he’d gone looking for a way out or a shortcut.
“I'm a rough fighter, not a dirty fighter,” he said. “I'm pretty rough. Half the time I'm not looking where I'm punching, I just want to hit you.
“The first one went around the back of his head, but he was ducking into the shot. The second one, he rushed me and put his head down. I threw the right hand at his ear, he turned into it, and it hit him on the back of the head.”
On one point, both men aligned: neither believes the other manufactured the ending.
“I don't believe [he was looking for a way out],” Allen said. “I spoke to Thomas, and he told me that he didn't. I'm inclined to believe him. He's a fighter, and I have to believe what he tells me. I have no hard feelings toward him, and that's that, really.”
Accusations, and a fighter’s defence
Outside the ropes, the conversation turned uglier. With Carty still down on the floor, sections of the online crowd accused him of quitting.
He was stunned by that narrative.
“The tone seems to be [online] that from the fight, I didn't fancy it and was looking for a way out,” he said. “What part in the whole fight, for the short time that it lasted, did I not fancy? Because — as far as I could see, having watched the fight back — it was me throwing punches and landing. The only two punches I got caught with were on the back of the head.”
For Carty, the idea that he would throw away a night like Croke Park cuts deeper than a bad headline. He spelled out what it took to get there: the long return from an ACL injury, the financial hit, the time sacrificed by his team, the gamble on a breakthrough.
“It's just absurd [thinking I would try and throw the fight],” he said. “Having been sidelined for so long, after being injured, it took so much effort to get back — so much commitment from not just me but my team. My team has sacrificed so much time, alongside my own time.
“Financially, it was a massive commitment to get back from the ACL [injury], the training that we put in. The pay isn't amazing at this level of fights. I was gambling on getting the bigger fight after this one. I was fully prepared and fully ready to take this one. I thought I would be sitting here today, planning the next move. And all I can think about right now is getting the rematch.”
One man wants the rematch. The other doesn’t.
Carty’s position is simple. He wants Allen again. Same opponent, same stakes, this time with a proper ending. Given the bizarre finish and the noise that followed, a rematch would sell. On Irish soil, it might even top a bill on its own.
Allen, though, has no interest in running it back.
“I know they want the rematch ... [but] there's nothing in it for me,” he said. “I took the Croke Park fight because they offered me a deal for some of my fighters to box on their shows. I got six slots. ... That was why I took the fight. That was the only reason, as well.”
For the 27-9 heavyweight, this stage of his career is about closure, not chaos. He told Uncrowned he has only one or two fights left and that his remaining ambition is clear: win the British heavyweight title. Carty, in that plan, is a detour he doesn’t feel compelled to take.
So the night at Croke Park, with its 80-second storm and a heavyweight tumbling into the void, may end up as one of boxing’s unsolved riddles – a no-contest that both men will carry in different ways, and a “what if” that might never step through the ropes again.
