framing of the contest as a landmark
moment for elite women’s sport, the
bout stands on its two feet in boxing’s
merciless commercial ecosystem
without any assistance, founded
largely on Taylor’s celestial talent.
Her story has been well chronicled
and reproduced in a succession of
slick promotional videos in recent
weeks — the girl boxer from Bray, Co
Wicklow, who hid her ponytail to
fight disguised as a boy before
growing into an athlete whose balletic
grace and devastating brilliance
compelled the IOC to allow women’s
boxing at the 2012 Olympics inTaylor stakes
all in boxing’s
biggest female
fight in history
landscape of women’s boxing over the
past decade, Taylor puts her titles on
the line early tomorrow, and
essentially her status as the best
pound-for-pound boxer on the planet.
Serrano is third on that list, already
written into the record books having
held nine world titles at seven
different weights.
As a measure of the rising global
interest, the 260 media applications
exceeded the number for Anthony
Joshua-Vladimir Klitschko at
Wembley Stadium in 2017 and
outstripped demand to cover the
Canelo Álvarez-Dmitry Bivol bout in
Las Vegas next weekend.
Both fighters will earn seven-
figure sums for their work.
Whatever is said about the
rising graph of Taylor’s
earnings over the past few
years, it’s not that long
since Serrano received
$2,000 for a title fight.
At one point in the
five years of frequently
cranky negotiations
between both sides to
make this bout, the
6,000-seat Hulu
Theatre at Madison
Square Garden was
proposed as a venue. It
ended up staging the press
conference and weigh-in
instead; the main arena is
expected to sell out by
tonight.
It all adds up to an
extraordinary night in the
history of boxing. Beyond
the well-intentionedO
n Thursday lunchtime at
Madison Square Garden,
Katie Taylor and Amanda
Serrano took their places
on the dais either side of
the promoters Eddie Hearn and
Jake Paul for a press
conference, the lights overhead
glinting against Taylor’s four
lightweight world-title belts.
The now familiar plastic forest
of camera tripods and a
global press corps numbering
hundreds were massed in
front of them, recording
another chapter of an
extraordinary week.
For two fighters known
for their unease with the
talking and posturing
inflicted in the build-up to
these bouts, which yesterday
included suffering through
the staking of a $1 million
(£797,000) bet by Paul on the
outcome with Hearn, it’s a
relief that the numbers
underpinning the
superfight almost speak for
themselves.
At 35, having
transformed theMasood’s chance of history
You know you’ve had a good start
to the county cricket season when
60 is regarded as a slight
disappointment. Shan Masood,
the Derbyshire opener, gave a
return catch on Thursday to
record his lowest score of the
season after innings of 91, 62, 239
and 219. That makes a total of 671
with potentially one innings to
break Nick Compton’s record of
712 made in April.
The holy grail is 1,000 by the
end of May, something that has
happened only nine times and not
since Graeme Hick in 1988, but
while the seasons begin ever
earlier, the start of this year’s
Vitality Blast means that Masood
will have, at best, five more
innings to make the 329 he needs.
Getting there in ten innings
would equal WG Grace, who
didn’t bat in 1895 until May 9 but
reached four figures by the end of
the month — and at the age of
46 too.
Only Don Bradman has done itfaster: the Australia great needed
seven innings to reach 1,000 on
the 1938 Ashes tour, having done
it in 11 in 1930 when he hit two
boundaries in the last over on
May 31 to get there.
Glenn Turner, by contrast, got
18 innings in for New Zealand by
the end of May in 1973 but that
was in the days when touring
teams believed in, well, touring.
Since Hick, a few have come
close. Brian Lara made 675 runs
in his first six innings for
Warwickshire in 1994 and 501 in
his seventh, but that just sneaked
into June. Rob Key passed 1,000
on June 2 in 2004, while
Compton was on 950 on May 31
when rain ended play. He made a
century the next day.
Now Masood has his chance
at history.
Not bad for a journeyman
opener, who averages a meagre
29.31 in 25 Tests for Pakistan.
Mind you, England would love an
opener who could do that well.Everton living
on Lord’s prayer
We have reached that stage of the
football season when some fans
seek divine intervention. During a
debate on football governance
this week, Lord Jones, a Labour
peer, asked the culture minister if
he would use his “considerable
influence” and persuade the
bishops to pray for Everton. “It is
in trouble,” he explained, “and
may go down to a hotter place.”
The minister, Lord Parkinson of
Whitley Bay, below, said he was
sure that the prayers of the 26
lords spiritual would be
“ecumenically directed” —
bestowed on all — though that
may be optimistic with the Bishop
of Leeds. Not only are Nick
Baines’s diocesan team
just above the relegation
zone, but he is an ardent
Liverpool supporter.
Baines has form
when it comes to
praying over football.
During the 2014 World
Cup in Brazil he issued a
series of prayers: for the
tournament, its fans,
the host nation and
finally for the England
team. That one,
pessimistically, was
very short. It just
went: “Oh God.. .”THETAILENDER
Patrick Kidd
The restorative
air of Sidcup
With Blackheath’s first XV given a
week off, I dropped quite a few
divisions last Saturday to watch
our thirds play Sidcup in the
Invicta B league. After a
frustrating season in National 1,
with a record 15 losing bonus
points, it was good to see a
Blackheath side go 35-0 up by
half-time and win 40-12.
Unlike in mountaineering, the
rugby air seems more pure the
lower you go. Down there it’s a
game for all shapes and sizes:
ageing veterans hoping their
knees will survive, puppyish teens
busting to be let loose and some
properly fat props. The referee (a
former prop) was pleasingly
chunky. He said his problem was
less keeping up with the players
than with the regular changes
to the laws.
Behind me an older man
reminisced about playing for
Sidcup in his youth. “They
brought out a bottle of port
at half-time,” he
said. “I expected
oranges.” If
they got a
cheeseboard as
well that truly
would be
sport in
excelsis.PIC OF THE WEEK
A Leeds United fan
uses binoculars that
wouldn’t look all that
out of place at the
Royal Opera House
to check how far
away safety from
relegation is during
the goalless draw
against Crystal
Palace on Monday.
With five games to
play, Leeds are five
points clear of the
drop zone.22 1GS Saturday April 30 2022 | the times
Irish star’s superbout
in New York has had
more media interest
than Joshua-Klitschko,
writes Michael Foley
Taylor uses her supreme ring craft toUS blocks Sky pundit over Kinahan links
Matt LawtonThe Sky Sports pundit Matthew
Macklin was blocked from flying to the
United States this week as the fallout
over boxing’s links to the alleged Irish
crime boss Daniel Kinahan continued.
This week Macklin was due to fly to
Las Vegas as part of the Sky team for
tonight’s super-featherweight title bout
between Shakur Stevenson and Óscar
Valdez. But Macklin, 39, a former
world-title contender, was stopped
from boarding the aircraft in the UK on
the instruction of US authorities,
because of his past association with
Kinahan. Sources have said that he was
among a number of boxing figures
prevented from travelling.
The broadcaster has chosen to stand
by Macklin, insisting that he severed all
business links to Kinahan in 2017 after
founding the MTK Global manage-
ment agency in 2012 with a man the US
and Irish authorities say is the head of a
£1 billion drug and arms operation. The
US authorities have imposed sanctionson Kinahan and offered a $5 million
reward for information that leads to his
arrest, describing the Kinahan cartel as
a “murderous organisation”.
Sky’s relationship with Macklin has
been coming under increasing scrutiny.
MTK was named after him — his nick-
name is Mack The Knife — and the
agency, which also insisted that it had
ended all ties with Kinahan in 2017, has
now folded in the wake of the sanctions
issued by the US Treasury Department.
In the past Macklin and Kinahan
have described one another as best
friends, while Kinahan also developed a
close bond with the WBC heavyweight
champion Tyson Fury.
But this week’s development is a
source of concern at Sky, despite the
fact that Macklin has not been named
in the US sanctions. Sky Sports issued a
statement supporting Macklin, which
read: “Matt Macklin disposed of his
stake in MTK in 2017. Since then he
has had no commercial dealings with
Daniel Kinahan. Like everyone at
Sky Sports, he will fully comply with the
US sanctions.”Macklin has previously said: “Me and
Daniel started off MGM [MTK was
originally called Macklin’s Gym Mar-
bella in 2012]. We were best friends and
I was over there [in Marbella] all the
time when I was training so we set that
up and it just grew from there. Obvious-
ly there’s then been a lot of bad publici-
ty. Daniel has taken a backwards step.
He still advises lots of fighters.”
Key figures in the sport are now
distancing themselves from Kinahan,
although Fury’s US promoter, Bob
Arum, has revealed that his Top Rank
firm made payments to Kinahan for
four Fury bouts that were broadcast by
BT Sport. While BT has said that it is
now reviewing those payments, Sky
has stated that it will continue to work
with Top Rank because it did not broad-
cast the fights related to those alleged
payments.
The US government is pursuing Ki-
nahan, who is based in Dubai, and other
members of the cartel. The authorities
in the United Arab Emirates have also
moved against him, freezing corporate
and personal bank accounts.