EDDIE Hearn has rekindled the possibility of a Katie Taylor swansong at Croke Park this summer.
Hearn said that the money generated from Taylor’s last fight against Amanda Serrano being broadcast on Netflix made the prospect of meeting the cost of hiring Croke Park for a trilogy fight with either Serrano or Chantelle Cameron more palatable.
“After the last fight Katie said to me, I can’t remember the exact words, but something like: ‘It’s getting hard’,” he explained.
“I said: ‘It’s been hard for the last three years!’ If she had said to me then ‘I’m done’ I wouldn’t have been surprised but she quickly snapped back. I expect her to fight in the summer and my gut feeling is she’ll fight Serrano again.
“I really feel like, with the success of the fight and the audience (on Netflix) that fight now generates so much money that it might be easier to suffer some of the costs of Croke Park. There’s two things that Katie wants to do: Croke Park and Vegas.
“They (the GAA) have never been against it. I don’t think they’re queueing up to do a fight but they’ve never said: ‘We don’t want to do it’. We’re doing Conor Benn versus Chris Eubank jnr and it won’t be far off half the price to do it at Tottenham Hotspur than it is to do it at Croke Park – it’s close to double.”
Should Taylor fight in Las Vegas, Hearn, who said “this could well be her last year in the sport”, said the likely venue was The Sphere.
Meanwhile, Hearn, in Belfast for the press conference to launch the all-Ireland welterweight battle between Lewis Crocker and Paddy Donovan, expressed his “disappointment” that Anto Cacace looks set to turn down a defence of his IBF super-featherweight title against Matchroom fighter Eduardo Nunez.
It is understood that Cacace will instead defend his IBO belt against Leigh Wood in Nottingham in late March.