Katie Taylor will compete for the final time on Saturday night in a bid to become an undisputed world champion for a third time. The 40-year-old takes on French opponent Flora Pili at Croke Park in front of a crowd expected to exceed 80,000 spectators, drawing the curtain on her remarkable career.
Marriage to Sean McCavanagh
Taylor married American property broker Sean McCavanagh last year. She publicly revealed the relationship 12 months ago, when the pair attended a rehabilitation centre in her home County Wicklow, as reported by the Irish Mirror.
McCavanagh, speaking to the Sunday World about married life, said: "It's the best ever, she's the best!" He added about his Irish visit: "How could you not? I loved my time in Ireland."
Taylor has become stepmother to five youngsters, as her husband is father to two sons and three daughters. Sean's former wife, Alicia, mother to his five children, died in 2023 aged just 43.
Family rift and reconciliation
The Bray icon attended the same church as Sean, Alicia and their children, and previously holidayed with the family to Boston several years ago, where they attended a baseball match. Taylor moved to Vernon, Connecticut, in September 2016, a small community roughly 150 kilometres from Boston.
Together with her Connecticut family, she has also repaired her relationship with her father Pete in recent years. Pete had backed his daughter throughout her amateur journey, guiding her to Olympic gold at London 2012. Nevertheless, Katie removed her father from her training team before the 2016 Rio Olympics after a bitter family dispute.
Pete disclosed on James English's podcast 'Anything Goes': "I split with Katie's ma two years, maybe a year after the Olympics. Katie's really into her faith as well and I just remember Katie coming down to the boxing club and she says, 'I just don't want you in the corner, you and ma are not together'.
"I'm married now to Karen, and Karen's the same age as Katie and everybody was saying Pete's turned around for Katie's best friend, but they didn't even know each other. In social media and in the papers it was, 'Katie Taylor's best friend'. For me it's an insult, it sounds like 'Katie's been best friends with this girl since her childhood, you've bleedin' groomed her'. But she didn't know her, but that grows legs then. Just rumours and rumours and rumours."
Pete added: "She has such morals, she has such faith and thinks that when you're married you should be together for life. It killed me now, but I had to respect it because she did a documentary after and said, 'when I went training it was like I was fighting with only one hand because my da wasn't there'. She knew what the consequences would be, she lost in the Olympics in 2016 in Rio."
Pete revealed that it proved an enormously challenging time, suggesting the media had portrayed him as the antagonist. "We weren't really speaking," he recalled about his relationship with Katie during the Rio Games. "It was tough for both of us but that's life. Because we were always together it was a big thing in the newspapers, you'd think I was the only person who ever split up a marriage and when Katie got beaten I was painted as the villain. It made me a pure villain in Ireland but that's life, they used to make up stories about me on a bad news day. It was tough at the time."
Repaired relationship ahead of final bout
Katie and her father have since repaired their relationship, with Pete helping his daughter's preparations for numerous recent high-profile bouts. In an Instagram post, he wrote: "Training hard for Croke Park... and it's bringing me right back to the road to the Olympic Games. Same early mornings. Same obsession with getting better. Same belief that one moment can change everything. Funny how life comes full circle."
