Katie Taylor Last Opponent, Flora Pili, May Be France's Next World Champion

Katie Taylor, arguably the greatest Irish athlete ever, fought her last fight in boxing on Saturday. The woman she bested has a good chance of becoming France's next world champion.

Taylor defeated France's Flora Pili in front of 83,000 at Croke Park on September 5. It was "sayonara" for Katie Taylor, who will take her 26-1 record into retirement.

Pili could actually emerge from the biggest defeat of her career in a better position than she entered it. She is on the brink of a world title fight, and unlike Christian Mbilli, she has risen from within French domestic boxing to the world stage.

Croke Park once hosted a fight between Muhammad Ali and Al "Blue" Lewis that partly inspired Sylvester Stallone's Rocky film. Of course, that film was also partly inspired by the Rocky March.

The fighting ladies of the 140-pound division are poised for a scramble over various world championship belts. However, it's unclear who ends up with what.

Flora Pili's loss may have opened door to French world championship

Now Pili has a chance to write her own storybook ending. Her boxing accomplishments are a fraction of Katie Taylor's, but she has an intriguing story.

"I'm a civil servant, an HR assistant at the Saint-Avold urban community since 2016. Since 2021, I've also been a departmental councilor for the canton of Saint-Avold, holding an elected mandate. And I'm a boxer and a mother."

A mother, a world championship boxer, a bureaucrat, and an elected local official. Those very local responsibilities mean she doesn't have the luxury of training in Las Vegas or in an elite gym.

She trains in Saint-Avold, a town with a population of roughly 15,000, near France's border with Germany. She comes from a solid family of fighters and trains in the gym run by her father and trainer, Pietro Pili.

Pili is French, with Sardinian and Sicilian heritage, according to an interview on the French-language sports site Flashscore.

She took a leave of absence from her job to prepare for her fight against Katie Taylor, and she may need another. Pili was the International Boxing Federation's mandatory challenger for Taylor's belt. The WBO has already said Taylor's super lightweight belt has been vacated.

She is also a top-ranked contender by the World Boxing Council. With that context, it's believable that she could face Puerto Rico's Stephanie Piñeiro Aquino for the now-vacant world title.

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