All Rio Ferdinand was doing was attempting to bring a little balance into the interminable debate over who is the greatest soccer player between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo,
“People try and make comparisons of who’s better, etcetera, but just enjoy them, man.”
The former England and Manchester United defender succeeded only in becoming an enduring meme for fence-sitting. As Katie Taylor prepares to bid farewell to the prize ring against Flora Pili in front of her adoring public at sold-out Croke Park in Dublin on Saturday night, it feels like there’s a risk of doing the same thing when discussing the greatest women’s boxer of all time.
Katie Taylor and Claressa Shields – just enjoy them, man.
But what fun’s a column if you don’t pick a side? Indeed, elsewhere in his on-air diplomacy while covering the UEFA Champions League for BT Sport, Ferdinand hit upon the crux of the matter.
“I think all the great sportspeople in the world have had that someone else to feed off,” he said.
This is why Katie Taylor – a pioneer and a master of her craft, a sporting superhero and an artist in brutality – is the number one.
MORE: Katie Taylor vs. Flora Pili full breakdown and prediction
Who has won most titles out of Katie Taylor and Claressa Shields?
This debate was given a nifty shorthand by Shields herself, the self-proclaimed GWOAT – the greatest woman of all time. Taylor doesn’t really go in for that sort of bombast and might be the most naturally circumspect of the 82,000 who will cram into ‘Croker’ – the spiritual home of Irish sport that, on its most magical days, can feel akin to the soul of a nation in the form of a vast concrete bowl.
Shields is rarely shy of a sharp word for other leading lights in the female fight game, but it’s different with Taylor. Game recognises game.
“Am I number one? I have always shared that with Katie,” Shields told Sky Sports this week. “Me and her joke and say we’re 1A and 1B, because we’re both just that good. I’m not mad that [a fight between the two] didn’t happen. We had weight classes for a reason. And I respect her greatness and she respects mine.
“I beat the best in my divisions, and she’s beat the best in her divisions. I respect that. So no, I’m not upset that we never got to fight. I am happy to be able to watch her and her greatness. She’s done the same for me.”
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Shields has won world titles across five weight divisions, from light middleweight to heavyweight, and is a three-time undisputed champion. She was a two-time amateur world champion and also won middleweight gold at the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games.
Taylor is a two-weight, two-time undisputed champion, with the chance to make it three-time when she puts her WBA, WBO and IBF light welterweight titles on the line against Pili on Saturday, with the vacant WBC strap also up for grabs. France’s undefeated Pili will bring the lightly regarded IBO belt to the ring. Katie also claimed Olympic gold at London 2012 but suffered a shock defeat at Rio 2016. Nevertheless, her amateur career is at the heart of her greatness; her status as a trailblazer is indisputable.
Why Katie Taylor and not Claressa Shields is the GWOAT
When Taylor began boxing, the idea of women boxing at the Olympics was basically unforeseeable. As a child, she put her name down to K Taylor, tucked her hair inside the headguard and boxed as a boy because girls weren’t allowed. Her father and amateur trainer, Peter, pushed and pushed for his prodigious daughter, who also represented the Republic of Ireland in international soccer.
On October 31, 2001, aged 15, she beat Alanna Audley at Dublin’s National Stadium in Ireland’s first official female boxing match. Taylor would get used to making history and also fighting with stakes far beyond her own on the line.
In 2007, the International Olympic Committee was being lobbied to include women’s boxing, and an exhibition contest at the 2007 AIBA Men’s World Championships between Taylor — who had won the first of her five consecutive amateur world titles the year before – and Canada’s Katie Dunn effectively served as a showcase for their sport’s viability. Taylor laid on her typical and irresistible combination of guts and skill to seal the deal. She had the honour of opening the women’s boxing programme at London 2012, beating British hope Natasha Jonas at a raucous ExCel Exhibition Centre that was festooned with the Irish tricolor.
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Taylor and Jonas reconvened as pros where the Irishwoman won a unanimous but razor-thin decision at Manchester Arena in 2021. Jonas went on to win world titles at welterweight and super welterweight, and those credentials highlight part of the equation that makes Taylor the greatest.
It’s something Shields can do very little about. Claressa has beaten everyone put in front of her, almost always with magisterial ease. Savannah Marshall remains the only fighter to have beaten her as an amateur or a professional, prevailing when they met at the 2012 World Championship. The rematch in the paid ranks was eagerly anticipated, but Shields boxed to a brilliant win. The spectacle of the American actually losing a couple of rounds made it feel closer than it was.
Shields has never tired of pushing herself and seeking new challenges. She conquered the light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, where her size disadvantage was countered by her skill set being on another planet. When she dropped back down to middleweight to demolish Kaye Scott last time out, she punched more spitefully than ever before.
At 31, time is still on Shields’ side for a true challenger to emerge, someone to burnish her legend. Taylor has had both the fortune and difficulty of operating in the 135 and 140-pound divisions where several elite fighters plied their trade. “That someone else to feed off,” as Ferdinand put it.
The Jonas victory would be many boxers’ banner win, although it doesn’t come particularly close for Taylor. Her two-fight series with Delphine Persoon was hellacious, but served only as a precursor to the trilogy with Amanda Serrano. Two women topping the bill at Madison Square Garden gave Taylor another seismic, historic moment. And in Serrano, she found the Frazier to her Ali. The eventual ledger reads 3-0 to Taylor but tells just a portion of an epic tale. Only Taylor’s masterful win in their third fight, when she finally resisted the urge to slug it out with abandon against her great rival, settled the argument.
In the middle of all that was Taylor’s first homecoming and the heartbreak of losing to undisputed light welterweight champion Chantelle Cameron at Dublin’s 3 Arena via majority decision in May 2023. Six months later at the same venue, Taylor would not be denied and secured the same method of victory. Cameron’s win over Mikaela Mayer last weekend underlined her status as a modern great, just like Serrano. Katie has tangled with them all.
Why didn’t Katie Taylor box in Ireland?
Finally, it’s worth dwelling on a regrettable aspect as Ireland prepares to celebrate a champion who deserves every last breath of the adulation. It is a scandal that Taylor didn’t box in Ireland as a professional until the first Cameron fight, when she was 36 years old.
There had been no big-time professional boxing in the Republic of Ireland since February 2016, when a fatal gangland shooting interrupted the weigh-in for the proposed WBO European lightweight title match-up between Jamie Kavanagh and Antonio Bento. It was an assassination attempt on Daniel Kinahan, the head of the Kinahan cartel, who was extradited back to Ireland from Dubai last month to stand trial for directing the activities of a criminal organisation.
Kinahan intertwined himself with boxing as a manager and advisor. His involvement cast a long shadow, effectively strangling the professional sport in his homeland at a time when Ireland boasted arguably the finest fighter on the planet. It was a modern-day reminder of how combat sports can often drift too comfortably to the fringes of lawlessness and beyond. Ireland’s other great fighting export of this era is Conor McGregor, a UFC warrior now more noted for being an utterly odious buffoon.
Boxing entered the wilderness in Ireland before Taylor turned professional. It surely couldn’t have remained there, given the country’s fiercely proud history in the sport, but it would not have returned like this without Taylor’s reserved and relentless brilliance. Her dominance with dignity.
The fight game is accustomed to grubby back alleys and sneaking around unnoticed. But Taylor took boxing back to Ireland – and back to its most famous stadium for the first time since Muhammad Ali fought Al Lewis in 1972 — through the front door in celebration, just as she introduced women’s boxing to the Olympics more than 14 years ago. It’s why there’s no quibbling about labels this week from Shields or anyone else. There’s just gratitude and love for a boxer who did it all, pulling her nation and a ramshackle sport along for the ride.
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