KATIE TAYLOR makes her first defence of the WBA lightweight tonight (December 13) against America’s Jessica McCaskill.
“Believe it or not, Katie’s really got the bit between her teeth,” promoter Eddie Hearn said. “If you look at their social media it’s all been ‘she’s over-hyped,’ ‘she doesn’t want to fight us,’ ‘we’ll destroy her.’
“I thought this fight was going to be the fight for 2018, I thought this would be a perfect America fight. But Katie was like I want her next. So we made the fight. Katie’s like the silent assassin, she’s brutal. But she’s got to be smart in this fight. She got hit too much in that last fight, I thought.”
Hearn is planning on taking Taylor to Ireland for a homecoming fight in April 2018 and for her to add more titles to her collection next year.
“The plan is to unify. So you’ve got [Victoria] Bustos, who’s the IBF champion, who’s next on her list. I want to take Katie back to Ireland in 2018. That’s obviously the sensible thing to do and then I think there’s other standout fights, whether it’s Holly Holm – I’m not trying to jump on the MMA crossover. Holly Holm’s actually a boxer. Some kind of world champion,” Hearn said.
“You’ve got others coming through, Tasha Jonas, Chantelle Cameron. It’s great. The more the merrier. But first things first, the aim is to pick up all the belts and unify the division and then move up.”
