Katie Taylor lights up New York and Eva Wahlström in lightweight title defense

The magnificent Katie Taylor did not make progress toward her ultimate goal of unifying the world lightweight championship on Saturday night, but the popular Irish champion did nothing to curb her meteoric ascent through boxing’s paying ranks in her scintillating Madison Square Garden debut.

The 2012 Olympic gold medalist did not simply outbox and outclass Finland’s Eva Wahlström on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Álvarez and Rocky Fielding: Taylor won every minute of every round against a previously undefeated world champion in a clinical beatdown. All three ringside judges scored it a 100-90 shutout, as did the Guardian.

Taylor (12-0, 5 KOs), all business during a crowd-pleasing entrance to the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, used fluid in-and-out movement and blinding hand speed to keep Wahlström on the back foot from the opening bell, picking her spots with sharp, accurate punches upstairs before opening up with effective body combinations toward the end of first round amid “Olé, Olé, Olé” chants that cascaded down from the mezzanine.

In the second Taylor’s left hook continued to find purchase on the welt that had already appeared under the the right eye of Wahlström (22-1-1, 3 KO), the WBC’s champion at 130lbs who was moving up a division to challenge for Taylor’s WBA and IBF lightweight belts. Taylor’s ring intelligence was on full display as she alternated the head and body attack to keep Wahlström uncertain and tentative while taking away her opponent’s left hand, exposing her lack of a plan B.

“That was exactly the idea,” she said afterward. “[Trainer Ross Enamait] saw that she had a good left jab and if we shut that down right away we’d have the fight won.”

By the end of the sixth Taylor was in total control and Wahlström, already a bit gun-shy from the start, had tasted the power of her naturally bigger opponent and either wouldn’t or couldn’t offer an answer. Taylor grew more emboldened in the seventh, stepping into the pocket for longer stretches and unloading with further educated combinations and flurries to the body.

But as Taylor clearly pressed for the knockout in the final rounds, pouring on the punishment as the partisan crowd broke out into chants of “Ka-tie! Ka-tie!”, Wahlström held on, often literally, in full survival mode until the final bell, no doubt benefitting from the condensed two-minute rounds on the women’s circuit.

The performance earned rave reviews from Anthony Joshua, the unified heavyweight champion who afterward visited Taylor’s dressing room, where the promotional stablemates discussed her clinical performance and exchanged thoughts on the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder fight earlier this month.

Afterward Taylor, one of the most decorated female amateur boxers in history, re-affirmed her long-held goal of unifying the lightweight championship. That will require matches with Belgium’s Delfine Persoon, the former kickboxer who holds the WBC belt, and Brazil’s Rose Volante, the WBO champion.

She said on Saturday the Volante fight will likely come first: on a 16 March card in Philadelphia to be headlined by Tevin Farmer, who successfully defended his IBF super featherweight title for a second time in Saturday’s co-main event.

Taylor also floated the possibility moving up to face Norway’s Cecilia Braekhus, the longtime undisputed champion at 147lbs regarded for most of the decade as the pound-for-pound world No 1, saying that a summit meeting could be made at 140lbs, but that any fight beyond that limit would be a bridge too far. Another possibility is Puerto Rico’s Amanda Serrano, the six-division champion who currently holds the WBO strap at light welterweight.

“That’s a huge, huge fight,” Taylor said. “Let’s get it on.”