By Gus "Walk-Off" Fields
There are retirements, and then there are send-offs. Katie Taylor's is shaping up to be the latter. The Irish boxer, one of the most decorated fighters of her generation, steps into the ring for her final bout Saturday at Croke Park in Dublin, where an anticipated 80,000 fans will gather to see her off, according to BBC Sport's inside look at her emotional fight week.
Taylor has spent a career being the fighter other boxers pointed to when they needed proof that women's boxing belonged on the biggest stages — undisputed champion, Olympic gold medalist, the fighter who helped fill arenas that once doubted anyone would show up for a women's card. Now the tricolours are out, the tears are apparently already flowing in the build-up, and a nation is getting ready to say goodbye in the loudest way it knows how: at Croke Park, the cathedral of Irish sport.
Details of Saturday's opponent and the specifics of the bout itself weren't included in the material available to us, and we'd rather leave that blank than guess. What is clear is the scale of the occasion — a stadium built for Gaelic football and hurling finals, turned over for one night to a boxer who's spent years building the case that she belonged there.
There's a particular kind of pressure that comes with fighting for the last time in front of your own people, in your own country, with the weight of everyone's expectations for a perfect ending riding on you. Taylor has carried heavier things than that. Saturday, Dublin gets to carry her.
Final score's the last thing that mattered here.
— Compiled from reporting by BBC Sport.
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