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Katie Taylor’s trainer, Ross Enamait, reflects on a decade of working with an Irish icon, and dealing with the injury that changed her career.
Gavan Casey TRAINER ROSS ENAMAIT considers there to have been two distinct phases to Katie Taylor’s decade-long professional career: pre-calf tear and post-calf tear. The injury has never previously been disclosed by Taylor or her team but it has shaped her last seven years in the ring.
On 15 March 2019, Taylor dismantled Rose Volante, stopping her opponent in the ninth round of a blistering display in Philadelphia, adding the Brazilian’s WBO lightweight world title to the WBA and IBF titles already in her possession. That left only Delfine Persoon’s WBC title for Taylor to complete the set and become undisputed champion. Taylor celebrates at the final bell against Delfine Persoon at Madison Square Garden in 2019.
Tom Hogan / INPHO Tom Hogan / INPHO / INPHO Anthony Joshua, then a unified champion in his own right, holding the IBF and WBO heavyweight belts, was pencilled in for a US debut at Madison Square Garden, New York, on 1 June. Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing, cognisant of Taylor’s growing commercial potential across the Atlantic, saw Joshua’s American bow as an opportunity to impress upon a large global audience their star female fighter from a prominent slot on his undercard.
Enamait considered seven weeks too tight a turnaround for his boxer, who was soon to turn 34. He was proven right: Taylor, her body worn down from four fights in eight months, tore her right calf early in camp for her undisputed clash with Belgian machine Persoon. She pressed ahead with the fight regardless, as is her wont. But nothing was ever the same.
Taylor’s injury was a nightmare for a fighter with innumerable miles on the odometer, one whose metabolism had naturally slowed. But a torn right calf is particularly disastrous for an orthodox boxer of any vintage: the back leg is the launchpad from which one throws a jab, or a one-two combination. The right foot is the one from which a right-handed boxer ‘pushes off’ and does their most meaningful work.
Ross Enamait with Katie Taylor following her first victory over Amanda Serrano. Gary Carr / INPHO Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO Taylor’s body of work since 2019 has been coloured by the natural deterioration of her body, her right calf a constant issue; for some lesser fights, she has even undergone entire training camps without doing any running or skipping whatsoever, her cardio built solely in the ring through sparring and upper-body exercise.
A generational athlete of Taylor’s ilk should be considered a lunatic as a general rule, but the sheer extent of her lunacy has been hidden from us for years.
“Like, even going into the first Amanda Serrano fight , she was running on an anti-gravity treadmill,” Enamait tells The 42. “So, basically, you run with 60% of your body weight because, again, we had calf pains, and we were kind of scared to test it. “So, y’know, there’d be fights where it’s like, even the commentators would say, ‘I don’t understand, why is Katie not throwing a double jab! ’ Y’know, ‘What’s she doing here?
’ And it’s like, ‘Well, you don’t really understand. You don’t understand what she’s dealing with,’” he laughs.
“The Persoon fight, the Serrano fights… the Natasha Jonas fight: again, like, injured, y’know? Couldn’t move and she just gutted it out.
“So, when you hear all these conversations about, ‘Who’s pound-for-pound number one? ’ and whatnot, it’s between Katie and Claressa Shields. Claressa is 31 now, right? Katie didn’t turn pro until she was 31.
“Katie turned pro and her boxing brain and IQ were increasing, but she was doing it while her body’s prime was decreasing. So, you never really saw the best of both worlds where Katie was physically at her peak while her boxing IQ was also at its peak.
“So, it’s been kind of amazing that she’s been able to do what she’s been able to do, because her body hasn’t always cooperated with her. And she’s… whether you call it stubborn or, y’know, I don’t know what the word is, but she would never pull out because of it or let anyone know or make an excuse.
“But I can tell you now, I’ve been there and, like, we’ve had to work around some shit that you wouldn’t believe. People have no idea what she’s battled through physically, and she’s still going. Advertisement “She’s a pound-for-pound number one or two, but with a body that’s far from it. ” Taylor and Enamait in 2019, prior to the first fight with Delfine Persoon.
Matchroom Boxing / Mark Robinson/INPHO Matchroom Boxing / Mark Robinson/INPHO / Mark Robinson/INPHO Enamait, whose books on self-professed low-tech, high-effect training are what lured Taylor towards him in the first place following her Rio 2016 exit, maintains that the Irishwoman was “unbeatable” as far as her first fight with Persoon in June 2019, in which she earned a contentious majority-decision victory to become undisputed lightweight champion .
“But once the injuries kind of started racking up, she became a little bit more human, I guess you could say,” adds the Connecticut-based coach. “Like, Chantelle Cameron and Serrano, they’re lucky that they didn’t get Katie before that calf tear because I think she would have brutalised them. They wouldn’t even have been close fights in my opinion.
Taylor’s trilogy with Serrano will forever precede the game that they helped to change, their conflict enrapturing even those who years earlier belittled women’s boxing as it began to pop up on their TV screens for the first time. After two classic showdowns at Madison Square Garden and Cowboys Stadium, in which Taylor won the judges’ decision on each occasion, the 2012 Olympic champion decisively closed the book on their rivalry back at the Garden in July 2025.
The promotion for the trilogy fight was such that Taylor and Serrano spent umpteen hours in each other’s company beforehand. A kinship crept through the cracks in the pavement, blossoming into a reluctant friendship before their final battle.
Enamait and Serrano’s trainer, Jordan Maldonado, too, began to develop a mutual fondness some years after they almost came to blows in the ring in Boston, where Taylor defeated Amanda’s older sister, and Maldonado’s wife, Cindy Serrano; so much so, in fact, that Enamait was last Saturday a guest for Serrano’s 50th professional victory — a highly controversial decision over Lucrecia Anabella Manzur in California — before flying to Ireland to finish Taylor’s training camp for her farewell fight with Flora Pili at Croke Park next week.
Enamait doesn’t make a particular fuss about Taylor’s third victory over Serrano, attributing it partly to the fact that the Puerto Rican great is demonstrably past her best, her apparent decline surely accelerated by her two vicious previous encounters with Taylor. Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano following their trilogy fight at Madison Square Garden.
Gary Carr / INPHO Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO Avenging Taylor’s sole professional defeat to then-light-welterweight world champion Chantelle Cameron, however, at the 3Arena in November 2023, ranks among the true highlights of Enamait’s decade spent working with an Irish icon.
“I wanted the first fight postponed because I knew we were hurt a month out,” says Taylor’s coach. “I just wanted it delayed by two months, but it didn’t happen. “We went ahead with the fight and, y’know, not making excuses, but, like, Katie wasn’t herself that night. So to come back and win that rematch was big.
“Cameron and her team, they had a lot to say after the first fight. Like, we’re in the ring afterwards, and Nigel Whatever-His-Name-Is walks over and says, ‘Hey, Katie, there are weight classes for a reason. ’ I didn’t hear it, but if I had heard it at the time, there might have been a different scene in the ring.
“So, it’s like, to have someone say that… And they’re taking pictures in the airport, next to Katie’s picture … It was definitely nice to shut them up. “Like, with Serrano, even when we fought them the third time, we were actually pretty cordial with them going into it because there were so many freaking promos in the three years beforehand, or whatever it was, that you kind of get used to them.
Yes, obviously, it was nice to beat them.
“With Cameron, though, there was never anything cordial. We didn’t like them and they don’t like us. It was great to go beat those fuckers. Croke Park awaits Katie Taylor.
Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO Taylor’s defeat to Cameron in their initial meeting in Dublin, however, might be considered a cautionary tale. That May 2023 meeting at a sold-out 3Arena was Taylor’s first-ever professional fight in Ireland, and the flatness to her performance in the early rounds — from which she never recovered on the judges’ cards — was attributed to everything from the length of her ring-walk to the general atmosphere, the seven-year wait for a homecoming apparently manifesting itself as a significant weight on her shoulders.
She set the record straight at the same venue six months later, certainly, but the magnitude of a farewell fight in front of 80-plus-thousand people at Croke Park is, arguably, the only kind of pressure that the 40-year-old Taylor has never experienced in her two and a half decades of competitive boxing. She is, after all, human, by her coach’s own admission — at least when she has only a leg and a half underneath her.
And much like Cameron in May 2023, Flora Pili will carry with her no gooey sentiment into the ring at GAA Headquarters: this will be a night on which she can change her own life forever, and she has no intention of showing up only to celebrate the life and times of her opponent. Katie Taylor prior to her rematch with Chantelle Cameron.
Bryan Keane / INPHO Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO “Yeah, I mean, maybe the emotions got to her and she got beat,” Enamait says of his boxer’s first meeting with Cameron.
“But I think that’s something you learn from. She’s aware of that.
“I’m not saying that’s why she got beat but, y’know, it was definitely something she noticed, that she was a little bit emotional beforehand. “But as far as walkouts, it’s like, she fought at AT&T Stadium — it was fucking mobbed there. MSG doesn’t have the capacity of an outdoor stadium but, because it’s closed, sometimes it might be as loud or louder.
When you look up and you see 20 or 40 or 50 or 80 thousand people, it’s just a lot of people regardless. I don’t think you’re taking notice of how many people are actually there.
“Listen, we’ve got to control our emotions because none of this shit matters unless we go out and win. “The first Cameron homecoming was a big deal and then we lost. So, none of it really mattered in terms of the crowd or whatever. All Katie remembers is ‘why I lost’.
“She’s 40 years old, fighting against a 29-year-old who’s probably naturally bigger than her. When you’re 40, no fight is going to be a walk in the park. ” Taylor working out with trainer Enamait.
Ed Mulholland / INPHO Ed Mulholland / INPHO / INPHO Enamait, then, for whom Croke Park will remain something of an abstract concept until he walks in there for the first time on fight week, is treating Taylor’s final fight as he would any other fight: the only priority is to win. Taylor, equally, is locked in ahead of next Saturday’s farewell, albeit the odd bit of sentimentality has managed to creep its way through the doorway of their private training quarters somewhere an hour outside Dublin.
“I mean, she’s actually sparring tomorrow , and we were kind of joking last night; Katie realised, ‘Well, it’s actually going to be my last spar ever! ’” Enamait laughs.
“And I said, ‘Well, you can always come down to the gym and tune up some little kids or something if you want. ’ “But, you know, I think the biggest difference would be just that from every fight Katie’s had since, probably, Anahi Sanchez , it’s always been, ‘What’s next? ’ “Y’know, at times, haven’t even fought yet and the media are always asking her about who she’s going to fight next.
‘Is it Serrano? Is it Baumgardner? Is it Cameron? ’ “So, finally, we can just have a fight without people worrying about what the next step is gonna be, or the next chapter. This is it: this is the last chapter. ”
Interview Katie Taylor Last Dance Ross Enamait
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