This past Saturday, Chantelle Cameron broke through as the potential next star in women’s boxing. For Katie Taylor, her loss to Cameron will serve as a pivotal moment in her career, according to her promoter.
“Yeah, she was devastated,” Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hear said Monday on The MMA Hour. “When I saw her in the lift, actually, we went down in the lift, and I walked with her to the car, and she was sort of gobsmacked. It was quite a trippy experience seeing her lose, wasn’t it? It’s like, when they announced Chantelle Cameron [as the winner], everyone’s like, ‘My God, Kate Taylor’s lost,’ and she was quite shocked with it all.”
Taylor was on the wrong end of a majority decision against undisputed super lightweight champion Cameron in her quest to capture titles up a weight class.
“I said, ‘Listen, now’s the most exciting chapter of your career,’” Hearn explained of his post-fight conversation with Taylor. “And she said, ‘It doesn’t feel like it. it feels like a bad dream.’ I said, ‘But you’re gonna wake up,’ and said, ‘Does it hurt?’
“She says, ‘So bad,’ and I said, ‘Great, that’s all we need to know, because the moment it doesn’t hurt, then it’s time to hang up the gloves. If it hurts, if it eats you up every day, you’ve got to live off of this pain now until this next fight. It’s got to eat you up every single day of your life.’
“And she’s like – and I knew it [would be this way] – she says ‘We’ll win this rematch,’ I said, ‘That’s what I want to hear.’”
While Taylor the competitor will need to overcome the big setback, Hearn is fully confident the the undisputed lightweight champion will find her footing through her support system.
“It’s gonna be painful these next few days, she’s gonna be the most unhappiest person on the planet,” Hearn said. “[But] she’ll smile, she’ll be wonderful around her family. She will continue her faith, but it will be eating her up inside like the competitor that she is, and she’ll come back stronger, and the rematch will be epic.”