In March 2009, 9,000 boxing fans filled Dublin’s O2 arena to see Bernard Dunne (The Dublin Dynamo) fight for a world title against Panama’s Ricardo Cordoba. On the undercard of that fight was a name that many inside the arena had heard before, but few had seen in action. Katie Taylor was one of Ireland’s most successful sportspeople; a two-time world amateur champion, three-time European champion and the fighter pushing hardest for the International Olympic Committee to allow women’s boxing into the Olympic Games for 2012.There were huge cheers as she walked to the ring that night to take on three-time Pan American champion Caroline Barry in a four-round fight under amateur rules (four, two-minute rounds).“Just wait ‘til you see Katie Taylor,” said legendary RTE commentator Jimmy Magee, well aware that many of those watching will not have done so before. “She’s the most talked about and least seen Irish sportsman,” he surmised.Taylor in action with Barry in Dublin (PA Images via Getty Images)As the fight began, Magee’s partner in the commentary booth Dave McAuley took in what he was seeing: A female fighter with lightning-quick hands, punch power, neat footwork and impeccable balance.“She punches better than some men I have seen,” he said in the opening round.By the end of the fight, an enthralling contest which Taylor won by a somewhat wide 27 points to 3, the crowd was on their feet.“That’s as good an amateur fight as I’ve seen, and I’ve been doing it for 46 years,” said Magee. “A night that few of us who’ve seen it will forget. Women’s boxing is alive, well and pumping in the O2 arena.”Few could have imagined then, just how far women’s boxing would travel, carried high on Taylor’s shoulders, over the next 17 years.On Saturday night, she put on the gloves for one last time and recorded the 26th victory of her professional career, defeating previously unbeaten Frenchwoman Flora Pili in front of 80,000 adoring fans at Croke Park — a venue filled with prestige and history — in a fight shown live on free-to-air television in Ireland. She retires as the winner of five amateur world titles, an Olympic gold medal, and a three-time undisputed world champion as a professional.Success inside the ring is only one part of the Taylor story, though. Beyond it, there is so much more.“I first saw Katie when she was like nine or 10, beating up some poor young fella,” says Mercedas Taaffe-Cooper, who was one of the first female boxing coaches in Ireland in the 90s and trained Irish amateur stars including brothers Alan and Stephen Reynolds. Speaking from her home in Australia, where she combined her clinical psychology and sports science background to found CounterPunch, a resilience program using boxing and psychology to support teenagers, Taaffe-Cooper says she saw Taylor’s ability straight away.“She was one of those athlete types — she was a top-quality soccer player as well. And she had natural hand speed. She didn’t really care that it was boys (she was sparring). I actually felt sorry for the boys because some of them would have potentially hesitated a bit. But I think after they got a few claps off Katie, that went out the window.”At that time, girls and women were not allowed to box in Ireland (or many other countries). Taylor was desperate for that to change. Seeing the boys from her gym — including ones she was beating up in spars — entering and winning championships was galling, when there was no opportunity for her to do the same.She took matters into her own hands, tucking her hair into a headguard and registering at competitions as K. Taylor. It was a time that instilled in her the purpose that has fuelled her ever since: to ensure that the women and girls who came after her would not have to face the same barriers.Change soon came. In England, boxer Jane Couch took the British Board of Boxing Control to an industrial tribunal over their refusal to grant her (or any woman) a professional boxing licence. In March 1998 she won, earning the right to box professionally in the UK. It was a landmark ruling.Ireland followed suit three years later, and in October 2001, a 15-year-old Taylor found herself facing Alanna Audley, a year her senior, at Dublin’s National Stadium, in Ireland’s first officially sanctioned amateur women’s boxing match. The pair have remained friends ever since.Five years later, Taylor became Ireland’s first-ever amateur boxing world champion. It was just the beginning. She did not lose a single fight from the time she won that title in November 2006 until March 2010, picking up another world title in that period. She dreamed of something even bigger, though.“I had this dream of being Olympic champion,” she told The Athletic in a video call from her training base in Connecticut, U.S., ahead of her final fight. “And my whole childhood was based around that dream, just preparing for the Olympic Games.”Taylor’s success on the global amateur stage gave her a platform to try and convince a sceptical International Olympic Committee (IOC) that women’s boxing should be included in the Games — a stage it hadn’t featured on since it was included as a demonstration sport at the 1908 Olympics.She took part in exhibition fights in Russia and Chicago, U.S. The pressure was immense. Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster, Taylor recalled getting a visit from an IOC member a few days before she fought in Chicago in 2007, who told her that her performance would determine whether women’s boxing was going to be included in the Olympic Games or not.“I had to perform,” she said. “I wasn’t just boxing for me. I was boxing for every single female who ever dreamt of boxing in the Olympic Games.”A huge part of Taylor’s legacy is wrapped up in that Olympic story. It started with a record-breaking noise recorded during her first contest, against Great Britain’s Natasha Jonas (London 2012 officials declared the roar of the crowd as louder than a jumbo jet taking off, with a 113.7 decibel reading) and culminated in her winning her country’s first gold of the games.