As promoter Eddie Hearn tries to quantify the impact Katie Taylor has made throughout her career, there is a smile and shake of the head as he says, “the whole story, you couldn’t make it up.”

On Saturday night, Taylor will make her final walk to the ring when she takes on Flora Pili at Croke Park, with the chance to become undisputed light-welterweight champion once again.

While Taylor entered professional boxing in 2016 with an Olympic gold medal, five world and seven European amateur titles to her name, there were no guarantees that star power could flourish in the paid code where women’s boxing remained firmly in the shadows.

After agreeing to meet Taylor, her mother Bridget and manager Brian Peters, Hearn’s interest was more than piqued.

“I went into that meeting, I would say 90% in my mind I wasn’t going to do anything,” said the Matchroom chairman.

“She’s so fierce and the way she was talking, like the passion, the determination and she was telling me the story about the Olympics [pushing for women’s boxing to be added to the programme for London 2012] and I was just like, ‘this is unbelievable’. That was when we decided to headline her in November.”

The decision to put Taylor on after Ohara Davies’ victory over Andrea Scarpa that night at Wembley Arena was met with some scepticism from his father, Barry.

“He’s like, ‘oh, mate, no one’s interested in the women’s boxing’ but he watched her debut and he was like, ‘oh my God’.

“From there, the story’s been unbelievable.”

Taylor made around £6000 for that initial victory, “at the time in women’s boxing, a lot of money” Hearn reflected, but that proved yet another obstacle Taylor was determined to overcome for female fighters.

Following a defence of the WBA and IBF light weight titles against Cindy Serrano – sister of great rival Amanda – at Boston’s TD Garden in 2018, Taylor questioned why Tevin Farmer, who defended his IBF super-featherweight title against James Tennyson on the same card, made significantly more money.

“She said, ‘do you think that’s fair?’, and I was like, ‘no, but I just think that’s the world and where we are right now’,” Hearn recounted.

“She’s like, ‘well, how can I sell more tickets, how can more people be interested in me, how can more people want to tune in to watch me fight, yet he’s making three times as much?’. I said, ‘because he’s a man and that’s what you need to change’.

“Now she’s making more than 99% of male fighters out there.”

The three fights with Amanda Serrano, two at a sold-out Madison Square Garden and another on the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson card in Texas, have helped transform career earnings and raise the profile for women’s boxing to heights many could not have envisaged.

While Taylor again pushed her promoter to seek a higher purse than the “incredible” offer made by Paul’s MVP for that second meeting, Hearn accepts “she was right” and despite fighter and promoter not having a contract “for years and years”, he can only conclude the Bray woman has been “incredible to work with”.

The love and respect for the 40-year-old has been evident in the build-up to Saturday’s last dance with contemporaries, former opponents and many more outside the boxing bubble lining up to show their appreciation for a career that has transformed the female fight game.

“Boxing is a really toxic world,” Hearn accepts.

“There’s always people who don’t like people but there isn’t one female fighter you could find that wouldn’t go, ‘she’s incredible’.

“She’s just so loved, there’s no airs or graces. She’s not there for the fame, she’s not there for the money, it’s purely her faith, the love of the sport and trying to set an example.”