Katie Taylor

Katie Taylor was born on 2 July 1986 in Ireland and stepped into the ring for the country's first officially sanctioned women's boxing bout in October 2001. Over the next fifteen years she dominated the amateur circuit - five consecutive golds at the Women's World Championships, six at the European Championships - and helped push women's boxing into the Olympics, carrying Ireland's flag at the 2012 London opening ceremony before winning lightweight gold. She turned professional in November 2016 under Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Boxing and within eleven months had claimed her first world title by defeating Anahí Ester Sánchez. In 2019 she stopped Delfine Persoon at Madison Square Garden to become the first undisputed lightweight champion and the seventh boxer in history to hold all four major titles at once. She repeated the feat in 2023 at 37, then again in September 2026 at 40 years and 65 days, beating the undefeated Flora Pili before the largest crowd ever assembled for an individual women's sporting event - 83,000 at Croke Park - to become the oldest undisputed champion in boxing history.