'Dear Katie, How FAR we've come!'... Katie Taylor’s FAIRYTALE HOMECOMING - The Sports Agents

0:02This is a global production. But also Deirdre, just a final thing, on top of all the boxing, just to add to how amazing you are and your life has been, when you talked about being a graphic designer, you were an illustrator on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yes. You never got into that. Yeah, well, that was just the day job. We were booed on our way to the ring. I mean, nobody wanted to see two women slap each other around before a Tyson fight. I wasn't like really thinking, oh, this is going to be the fight that makes women's boxing, you know, because we had no idea. When you became a world champion, women were still not allowed to box back in Ireland.

0:44A letter arrived from a young girl and that girl was Katie Taylor. Well, I have it right here. Maybe one day they'll even let us box in the Olympics. Oh my word, like all goosebumps. No other woman should have to go through everything I've gone through. If I go through all of this and the one that comes behind me and the one after that, if they've still got to go through all this, then what have I really accomplished? Imagine if Katie Taylor wasn't allowed to box. What a tragedy that would have been.

1:26Hello and welcome to the Sports Agents. Hi, Mark, in the same studio. Again, I mean, this is just now, this is three shows on the trot. You're going to get a restraining order from me, aren't you? Look, I think we've got such a special story to talk about and such a special guest today. I think we're going to get straight into it. Irish boxing icon Katie Taylor is going to walk into the ring for the very last time this weekend in front of 80 ,000 at Dublin's Croke Park, an iconic venue for an iconic fighter. Katie has transformed women's boxing forever. She took the sport from small halls to huge stadiums, but it might not have happened were it not for another Irish fighter who went before her, Deirdre Gogarty.

2:09Deirdre Gogarty, welcome to the Sports Agents. Thank you so much for coming on. There is so much to talk to you about, and it is an incredible story yours, and how it has had an impact historically, really, on women's boxing globally as we approach Katie Taylor's final fight. But let's go back to the beginning of your story and just put into context, especially for our younger listeners, the landscape for women's boxing in Ireland when you were growing up. Well, it was really unheard of and considered really unfeminine and not things any girl should be interested in. so I you know I was trying to be a normal girl but deep down inside I had this dream of being a world boxing champion so it was a very juxtaposition of um trying to fit in but also having this dream that everybody thought was mad and impossible and it will never happen but um I was determined to to I just want not just a female fighter I just wanted to be a fighter where did bearing in mind then it was not the norm and I'm guessing was never discussed and there was never anybody female that you could see as somebody whose footsteps you wanted to follow in at that stage as a young girl where where did this desire to be a fighter come from what what was the switch or the trigger yeah well the really uh turning moment was i was at my aunt's house in black rock in dublin and they were having me watch ballet trying to um show me something really feminine i could do and it'd be great for my posture and anyway thank goodness my aunt other aunt came in and she said let's watch barry mcguigan fight for the world title so there i was switched from the ballet to this brilliant fight.

4:08And it was such an exciting event. And when McGuigan won and he was announced the world champion, that was the moment I decided I wanted to be a world champion just like him. And of course, as you say, that there was nothing, you know, in terms of facilities or clubs or anywhere you could go. So your first kind of practice sessions were quite rudimentary in your bedroom, weren't they? The equipment. Yes, yes. Yes, I'd get knocked down about seven times in a fight and I'd come back and win by spectacular knockout every time. This was your shadow boxing, was it? Yes, yes. My dog thought I lost my mind.

4:52Yes, and I hung an old sea bag, which I stuffed with newspapers and rags in the closet and I'd go in the closet and punch literally till my knuckles bled. oh my goodness and were your family aware of what you were doing you know when you came out to your bedroom with with bloody knuckles or heard a heard a bang as you thought the ballet's not going well heard a bang as you fell down pretending to pretended to be knocked down did they know what you were doing uh not really i was very secretive about it uh they did notice all the white candles in the house going missing because i take the white candles and i'd melt the wax and I'd make a mouthpiece out of the candle wax would you so yes yeah because it looked cool you know I wanted to feed the part it tasted terrible it burned terribly but and that had to be white because the other colors didn't look as good and where were you going you might have got some green candles and and eventually a box in white and green so so going from that girl in her bedroom, you know, to where you ended up.

6:00There's a few important steps, I think that I mean, first of all, let's talk about how you ended up boxing in a car park. Oh, well, I've been in a lot of unglamorous places boxing. But my first fight was in Limerick in the back garden of a pub. I've trained in a literally in a car park in a driveway. in fact my biggest one of the biggest fights of my life I trained in a driveway for it didn't even have a boxing ring I fought in the basement of a London pub and then next fight I moved up to the the main floor so I was moving up in the world but that one that one in the pub garden that that was am I right I think that was the only fight you had in Ireland it is and at the time I thought you know we fought great the crowd loved it and I thought oh I've gotten to show the skill and now women's boxing would be legitimized in Ireland and I'd have a bunch more fights in Ireland but little did I know it was the one and only time I'd ever get to fight in my homeland.

7:08To get to fight in that car park then you did become part of a boxing club and you did find a trainer that was that how was that experience because one of the things i think i've always been taught and told about boxing and seen it on the odd occasion that i've been to a boxing gym is there is a respect for you wherever you are from because boxing is built on respect but was that the was that the case for a a teenage girl in ireland which is a completely different circumstance for anybody in that gym well the other fighters in the gym were respectful where I had a real problem gaining respect was with the old school part of the boxing world the men that were actually running boxing right and they did not want any part of female boxing involved in the sport so they were very disdainful about it and I was very shy I wasn't an outgoing person.

8:12I didn't like to step on toes. And it definitely made it really difficult for me. And then in the early 90s, something happened stateside, which changed boxing in that women were legally then allowed to fight and were going to be there were going to be sanctioned fights that obviously was in specific, specifically in America, wasn't it? Yes, I mean, women had been allowed to have boxing licenses since the 70s, thanks to the trailblazers then. So you could go to America and turn professional. But keep in mind, there was no amateur boxing for women anywhere in the world. So you jumped right into the pros right out of the gate.

8:53So what was the change then that led you to decide that you had to go stateside to pursue your dream? well my coach just said i'm gonna have to leave ireland and um he had a friend in london and the friend in london put me in touch with bo williford and i didn't hear back from bo williford for for months and months and months and when i finally did i'll never forget his words he said i don't know shit from shinola about women's boxing and i really don't want to learn so that's what i was coming over to and uh uh yeah he he was you know going to put me to the test and see if i could hang and that was his welcoming message yes yes did that did that did that motivate you bearing in mind you've already said you were the kind of you didn't want to step on toes and and you didn't want to sort of you know rock well i suppose rock the boat a bit but did words like that inspire you it did because I wanted to show how determined I was and how skilled I was I worked really hard on developing the skills of boxing to be taken seriously and really show that I was coming into the sport with total respect for the sport and not you know just trying to be an upstart so um yes absolutely fired me up to prove myself to him and I did and once I did he totally took me under his wing and he was my biggest ally after that so what was your first so he this is my favorite name of a gym ever I think the right the raging cajun gym is that right that's right what was your what was your first day your first week oh gosh it was oh it was brutal so the first day there you know I'm come all the way over from Ireland to America, so I'm expecting a big American gym, you know, brick walls, maybe two rings.

10:51Can't wait to get to the gym. And Bo starts driving out into the countryside past sugar cane fields and rice fields. And we end up in this little farmhouse and he gets out and starts walking towards this shed and these chickens are scattering. I'm like, what are we doing here? and then he shouts back are you gonna sit there all day or what and i'm like what so anyway i follow him to this shed and he steps in and he turns on the light and it buzzes and flickers on to my absolute horror there's a makeshift ring and a heavy bag and that's the gym so i go and talk but i tell you what i learned the most valuable survival lessons of my life in that gym in fact i don't think i would have made it through the martin fight without the lessons i learned in that gym wow it's your description is so cinematic as well i i think we would all be disappointed if it had been a shiny gym with beautiful changing rooms i mean it just fits your story so perfectly and there is there is a there are a few lessons that you had to learn though and and i think one came at the hands of somebody who put you in the ring with who you then 24 hours later decided to show show something of your prowess to yourself didn't you this is Ray Ryan I'm referring to yes yes yes I had just been in the ring with Kenny Weiss who I'd seen you know a couple of years earlier land one of the most devastating left hooks in television history on Jim MacDonald and that he was my first sparring partner and he took no mercy and then I was absolutely exhausted, especially with the climate.

12:31And not only the climate, they would boil a big pot of water in the gym to make a sweat pour. And then Ray Ryan got in with me and he really took liberties. I mean, beat me from corner to corner. And it was absolutely awful. It was a nightmare. But I was determined to come back and get him back for that. And I did. And we didn't see him again for a couple of years so you basically the next pretty much the next day beats him up as bad yeah and i i believe me i remembered every bit of it and i went twice as hard after him and and he was he was shamed so much that he couldn't believe it yeah yeah Yeah.

13:16That presumably did that then not change how Ray Ryan, sorry, change how Bo thought of you because he'd already agreed to work with you. But did that then give him an idea of what your career should be? Yes, I think so. And he realized, wow, she's really got something. You know, she's not just a little dentist daughter who can punch a bag a bit. You know, she really can fight. And so, you know, we went on the road in the States, traveling all over the place, fighting in, you know, backyard towns, small halls, any shows we could get on at all, sometimes for as little as$100. Did you enjoy that?

14:05Oh, yeah. It was so exciting. So exciting. And I'll never forget the first time I was handed a boxing license. And I was like, wow, the fact that I was officially a licensed boxer, that meant so much to me. Deirdre, what did your family know of what you were doing at this point? Because let's not forget, this is pre-internet, right? This is pre-mobile phones. I imagine you were ringing home every few weeks, maybe months. Yeah, yeah, very little contact. What did they think you were up to? Well, they knew I went for boxing. My father, of course, hoped I was really going for my graphic design career, you know, because I worked a full time job my whole boxing career.

14:46And but my mother was very worried about me. And at the time, I thought she was making a big deal out of it. But I realize now just I mean, she's I was going over to a complete stranger in this massive country and very little contact. and I must say it was really hard being that isolated and I did cry a lot and um the first year was very very lonely but but also being put in situations fighting male boxers where you had where you had to prove yourself which as as I'm getting my head around that as a parent is is is on its own let alone as you say on your own in America traveling etc etc in a very different time yeah without without the means of communication that we have now i can imagine that was a worrying time for the family yes it was um you know i mean who knows what was happening to me over there um and i must say i just you know my higher power was watching over me because so many things could have gone wrong it really well it was crazy but to accomplish something special you kind of have to be a little crazy those those fights that you were having because i think this is really important before we go on to the next bit we're in front of how many people in what in what kind of venues uh mostly in hotels like you know the ballroom of hotels kind of you know small shows small town shows um and it was we were always introduced as kind of like a special attraction or you know almost like a kind of a novel novelty act so it took a little while to get the traction of being taken seriously uh by the promoters but the fans loved it they loved the women's fights because we were all action and uh and we had so much to prove every time we got in there quick reminder you can catch up on our previous episodes on YouTube, on Global Player, wherever you get your podcasts.

16:49Please subscribe, follow, leave us a review as well whilst you're there. And more from Deirdre on the way, including when she met Christy Martin. That was the fight that put women's boxing on the map.

17:08As Mark alluded to there, going from those small hotel banqueting suites and other small venues around the country, suddenly there was a giant leap for you and a phone call that would, I imagine, change your life. Yes. And it was, you know, I had no question I was taking the fight, but there were so many reasons not to. First of all, Christy Martin was vastly more experienced than me. She had more one-round knockouts than I had fights. She was much heavier than me. I had the altitude going against me, too, because I had such short notice. I had my boss threatening to fire me. I had people saying, this is absolute madness.

17:55Do not fight her. She's too big for you. And I had so many voices telling me, you know, just pass this one up. And I just thought, no, I don't never waste an opportunity. So I took the fight and the rest is history. Yeah, the MGM. To go from there to the MGN, which at the time really was the boxing, you know, short of Madison Square Gardens and kind of everything seemed to happen stateside, didn't it, in the 90s? It's easy to forget that now because we're in this boxing landscape of fights happening all over the world and Saudi Arabia. This was, you know, the real kind of, you know, the pinnacle.

18:31And it was obviously the undercard to a huge, huge fight in Bruno and Tyson fighting. So that opportunity feels like something that, you know, you'd work up to. You had 10 days to get your head around this, your body around this and presumably be immersed in the hype as well. Yes. And at the very late hour, they decided to add it to the pay-per-view part of the card. so the media just went nuts because like this was huge that he took this massive risk of putting the women on the pay-per-fuse on a massive card I mean there was a bunch of world title fights on that card not just Tyson so it was a massive risk and so all of a sudden the media buzz around all that so the pressure really started building and then knowing her size and her power the one great thing I had was a great chin boy and I needed it in that fight mentioned in commentary a lot wasn't it what was the what was the um what was the hardest thing to prepare for in that 10 days then was it was it the physicality of taking on a much bigger woman than yourself or was it the mental side of things of suddenly going from the fights that you have been involved in in hotel ballrooms with relatively small crowds to the undercard of a massive heavyweight fight in a in one of the you know as gabby has said one of the venues of boxing at the time in front of tens of thousands was it physical or mental that was your biggest challenge really mental i always stayed prepared physically you know i never let i never let off training even between fights even going months and months without a fight so physically i was always ready but mentally i was like it was the dream of a lifetime to fight on a major card like that but at the same time you know there were all the whispers of how long will she last you know uh against christy martin so i know i was brought in as the opponent um and expected to maybe hang a couple of rounds with her they knew i was a good boxer because the matchmaker had seen me fight in a little small town show and i got that opportunity just out of that little backyard show, basically.

20:55So I wasn't expected to last very long. So that's pretty intimidating when everybody is kind of looking at you like you'll be out of there quick, you know. Because this was the biggest opportunity, I suppose, for women's boxing to put itself out there at the time, the biggest audience that had ever had an opportunity to watch a women's boxing match did you feel any responsibility for this to be an entertaining fight that the commentators could really get behind well I didn't you didn't want this to be a one-sided affair no well I never did that for any fight you know every fight I wanted it to be a great fight and put on a great performance um I wasn't like really thinking oh this is going to be the fight that makes women's boxing you know because we had no idea um but yeah i absolutely wanted to put on a good fight and um you know just feeling her power i thought my gosh um this is you know i mean she hit as hard as any man i ever sparred with and when she knocked me down i was absolutely shocked because I'd never been knocked down and I wasn't really that hurt but I was just shocked that she had that kind of power just to kind of knock me off my feet and so it was very overwhelming and then the other thing that was nuts too to me was when I first got in the ring and was looking in the crowd everywhere I looked I saw someone famous looking back at me and you're used to watching them perform not them sitting there watching you give us some names who's that fierce brosnan uh koopa gooding jr jack nicholson um oh gosh there was a lot so in the ring danger are you thinking as you're trying to bob and weave or or try and land a jab or are you thinking christ there's jack nicholson are you yeah i don't want to don't want to bomb in front of him you know um so yeah it was it was wild and then the other thing was that we were booed on our way to the ring i mean nobody wanted to see two women slap each other around before a tyson fight so that was really intimidating because you're like oh gosh you know you're going in with the whole crowd against you both of us were booed um and then within the first round oh and then the first round the crowd were going nuts.

23:26She had a boyfriend in the gym. Now they're very supportive. And she fights back. Look at this. Christy got hit with a real good left hook. Look out, Christy Martin in trouble, but she battles back. You can really, when you watch the fight back, the commentary is so interesting because at the beginning there is this reticence to kind of get behind this almost. And almost by the second round, the commentators are just so excited about the standard of boxing, how hard you're both fighting and punching. And by the end of it, well, it is almost like I described it today to our WhatsApp groups. It feels like a seminal piece of women's sporting history, never mind boxing history, in terms of what you showed was possible within that short period of time.

24:13A lot of people are looking at the boxing, the women boxing, very different and they're not sure how to take it. Their technique is excellent. They have mastered not just the basics, but some of the subtle nuances of the game. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, they started out, you know, very cautious with the commentary. And I think I think it was as much relief that, oh, gosh, thank gosh they can fight, you know, because, you know, you don't want to sit there through a terrible fight trying to make it sound good. And then they were really into it. And the best part I liked about it was Bobby Chez and Tommy Morrison were so into it.

24:49The pace that they got set here is just unbelievable. I think Gagardi is using some good footwork. I mean, the pace is just unbelievable. I mean, these girls actually are, it's just unbelievable to see this. You know, getting that kind of praise from real fighters who speak their mind and they were blown away. So it was very flattering. in their commentary of that fight and that fight your fight had an estimated 80 million people watching it in in they think around 180 countries so when did when were you aware that your life was was changing or about to change or had changed well i went back to my day job on monday morning and I was still cycling.

25:35So, you know, it's very bizarre to fight at the MGM on a Saturday night and cycle to work on Monday morning. But I was in work and back at the dreaded day job trying to catch up on what I'd missed. And someone ran in and said, hey, they're talking about you on the Howard Stern show. I said, oh, God, what's he going to say? You know, because he could be so cruel. So anyway, I went in to listen to it, you know, kind of biting my nails. And he was raving about how amazing it was. And, you know, I thought, well, if you can get praise from Howard Stern, you're doing pretty good. And then, of course, the media went nuts and Kate Christie got on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

26:18And, you know, my career took off a lot from there. So I had a lot more fights and it was good. It was good. Bringing it round to what's happening this weekend. Within a week, a letter arrived from a young girl. And that girl was Katie Taylor. Tell us about that. Yeah. Yes. So I'd heard about Katie through a friend of ours called Patty Mulhall, who, you know, always went to the national stadium, watched all the boxing. And he'd tell me there's this young girl and she reminds me so much of you, Deirdre. She's so shy and so quiet, but she loves boxing and she wants to be a boxer. So I'd heard him talk about her all the time.

27:04And then I got the letter from her. I said, oh, that's the girl Katie Patty was telling me about. and it was just a really powerful letter and I remember thinking, gosh, I hope she keeps it up, you know, because you just don't know what's up. What did the letter say then? The thing that blew me away is she's, well, I have it right here. You've got the original letter from her. Yeah, and look how beautiful her handwriting is. Mine is awful today. Anyway, she's only 11 here and this is what this is the part I love so much and she says I can't see boxing for girls taking off here in the near future I can see why you had to go away to get fights hopefully things will change over the next few years but maybe one day they'll even let us box in the olympics so oh my word yeah i've got goosebumps yeah it's just incredible and i remember at the time they were just you know they were just starting to let women box amateur in the in europe after i fought christy and i remember at the time now the olympics might be a little too ambitious but 16 years later she won the gold medal did you think when you read that oh Oh, bless her.

28:29A little bit, yeah. A little bit, yeah. How much of a pipe dream was that for women? Oh, at the time it was, yeah, at the time it was, and it was a struggle to get women's boxing in the Olympics. In fact, Katie had tried out for the first time and she stopped her opponents so quickly. They said, oh, no, we're not going to put women's boxing in the Olympics. So she had to wait again to try again. So it was a struggle. But I just love this letter. It just shows how far we've come in really a very short amount of time. I mean, it's been 30 years since I fought Christy.

29:17When you read that, how did it make you feel? But then when she won Olympic gold, how did it make you feel? because when you were in the thick of doing what you were doing in America, I'm guessing you were doing it for yourself. Did you view yourself as a trailblazer? Well, I knew I had to be, and I was doing it for myself, but at the same time I felt no other woman should have to go through everything I've gone through. If I go through all of this and the one that comes behind me and the one after that, if they've still got to go through all this, then what have I really accomplished? So, you know, I really hope that she had a better path and more opportunities than I had, because let's face it, most people aren't going to stick out all the disappointments and the heartbreak and the letdowns and the rejection.

30:16um and so she has she has gone on to to not just win that olympic gold obviously but then to to turn professional after she was disappointed in 2016 actually that was where she she questioned herself really where do i go now and actually that leap into professionalism was still at that point who's gonna who's gonna really take on these women where are these big fights going to happen and it has been such an incredible decade for women's professional boxing hasn't it uh oh yeah Yeah, it's been incredible. Yeah, she's been able to show the heights that women's boxing can go to. And she's broken so many glass ceilings that, you know, she's demonstrated there's no limit.

30:55There's truly no limit, you know, from being told no one will watch women box to selling out 82 ,000 seat stadium. I mean, I just want those people to be like, oh, it's amazing. it will be one of the great nights of in irish sporting history won't it oh absolutely and the fact that she has announced it's her last fight makes it just really poignant and i think it's going to make everybody really be totally in the moment knowing that this is the end of an error and um there may never be another katie taylor in our lifetime and there may be another katie Taylor we just have to see what happens you you just don't know the 10 11 year old girl who's going to be watching absolutely yeah today do you and what absolutely I saw just a bunch of them it's about what else they feel they can do and that I think is absolutely a real trailblazer it's the possibility that you kind of give to young people yeah absolutely not you know not just females or not just boxing it just shows anybody can have a dream and and if you stick with it you know look what can happen coming back just to round off your career when you became a world champion and you did become a world champion in 1997 women were still not allowed to box back in ireland i mean the juxtaposition of the two is just it's just ridiculous isn't it i know i mean champion of the world not allowed to box in my own country yeah it's um it's just outrageous now to think about that um it was quite you know i always wanted to have my last fight in ireland in fact katie even says in here um you know when i fight in ireland that they're all going to come and see me and it kind of really breaks my heart i never got that chance for her to sit and watch me box um but it is what it is in croak park yeah and thank god i mean you know imagine uh imagine if katie taylor wasn't allowed to box what how what a tragedy that would have been a whole country would have been deprived and the world deprived of her skill and ability and her great uh dignity that she's brought to the sport yeah indeed all of that amen to that and thank you for coming on and telling us and sharing this unbelievable.

33:28So honestly, when I first started reading and watching your fight and the goosebumps that just constantly kept going up, because it is, as you said there, dreams can't come true. And it's a cliche in sports so often, but actually what you have proved is that, and that with that incredible determination and hard work, you have laid out this path for so many others. Oh, thank you so much. It's just really healing for me to see it carried on and the momentum and you know i was down in the draw at a boxing club last night tons of young girls in there just loving the training uh really feeling part and included and you know nobody bats an eyelid now and um it's just such a joy to see that but also did just just a final thing on top of all the boxing just to add to how how amazing you are and your life has been when you talked about being a graphic designer you were an illustrator on the teenage mutant ninja turtles yeah well that was just the day job yeah sometimes i i would go uh i would go to speak at schools in the united states about you know being a world champion boxer and all they wanted to talk about was the turtles so um yeah my brother had a themed party a ninja turtles themed party they were big in our house they were big thank you so much lovely thank you thank you so much for having me lovely to meet you thank you so much for joining us today thanks to Mark that's one of my favourite interviews that we've done one of my favourite interviews that we've done what a story it's made me want to go back and watch Billion Dollar Baby again as well because I remember crying watching that that was a Clint Eastwood film yes it was but when Deirdre described all the people who were in the stadium I mean Clint was probably there you can imagine those Hollywood icons were probably thinking this is a movie this is amazing but that is just is that Pierce is that Pierce Brossom boof he would have been I was trying to work out the mouse would have been James Bond he would have been Bond at the time he's not just in the Thursday Murder Club no and Jack Nicholson yeah time has moved on and Jack Nicholson would probably have been the Joker around then wouldn't he I mean they were they're proper Hollywood icons but just a brilliant brilliant woman and a fantastic chat and that's it for today get in touch though with your thoughts on anything we've discussed or anything else you'd like us to discuss you can drop your comments below email us the sports agents at global.com or you can message on social media at the sports agents and of course all our past episodes are available on youtube global player or wherever you get your podcasts and as always please make sure you hit the subscribe button and maybe even leave us a review we'll be back soon

36:13this has been a global production