Katie Taylor, Irish World Champion Women Boxing
Irish boxer Katie Taylor, Ireland's world champion women boxing , is an amazing athlete and unstoppable as the world’s top female boxer in the last three consecutive years. Female boxer Katie Taylor is actively pursuing her dream of making women's boxing an official Olympic sport for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games.
Her energy and personality make her a charismatic inspiration for girls, women and people everywhere in Ireland and abroad and as World Champion Boxing 2008 and 2007, Triple European Champion Boxing and Captain of the Irish Female Football Team, she represents her country Ireland at the highest levels in both boxing and football.
Lightweight double World Champion boxing, Katie Taylor from Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland, started boxing in 1998. She comes from a family with a boxing background - her coach at the St. Fergal's Boxing Club in Bray is her father Peter who was 1986 Irish senior light heavyweight champion boxer and her mother is a boxing referee.
Katie Taylor first made Irish boxing history - at age 15 - on October 31 2001 in the first officially sanctioned women's bout ever held in Ireland. She fought 16-year-old Alanna Audley (now Alanna Murphy) of Belfast at the National Stadium in Dublin in the first of three female contests on a sixteen-bout amateur card. Katie Taylor won over three 90-second rounds by 23-12.
Katie Taylor made Irish boxing history again at age 18 in May 2005 when she became the first Irish woman to win a Gold Medal at the Senior European Boxing Championships.
Competing in Tønsberg, Norway, Katie Taylor stopped Eva Wahlström of Finland in the third round of their 60-kg lightweight final. Katie Taylor held a 19-17 points lead when the contest was stopped after Wahlström suffered an eye injury. Taylor had opened her campaign with an impressive second round RSCO-2 stoppage over Lucie Bertaud of France, followed by a stirring semi-final clash with defending European champion Gülsüm Tatar of Turkey. At the end of this rematch with the Turkish boxer, the computer scoring was a 12-12 draw but Taylor won by a razor-thin 29-28 edge in countback (punches thrown).
At the 2006 European championships in September 2006 in Warsaw, Poland, Katie Taylor won her second European Gold medal in a row with a second round stoppage of reigning world champion Tatiana Chalaya of Chechnya. This time Katie made short work of Chalaya, winning on the 15 point mercy rule with the scoring at 18-3. Katie also won the Best Boxer award in this tournament.