The moment is everything. At 10:47 on a Dublin night that will be retold for decades, Katie Taylor places her gloves and her four championship belts on the canvas at Croke Park, waves once to the crowd, and walks away. Eighty thousand people — the sixth largest post-war boxing attendance ever recorded anywhere in the world — shake the old stadium to its foundations. The fairytale, painstakingly constructed over nearly a quarter of a century, is complete.

Taylor, 40, outclasses France's unbeaten Flora Pili across ten rounds to claim the vacant WBC light-welterweight title, adding it to the WBA, WBO and IBF belts she already holds. The scorecards tell the story cleanly: 100-90, 100-90, 98-91. What the numbers cannot capture is the quality — the crisp footwork, the relentless pressure, the razor-sharp combinations that have defined Taylor's style from her amateur days in Bray right through to this final, luminous performance. Pili, brave but overmatched, never finds an answer.

The occasion is as striking as the contest. Around 80 per cent of those inside Croke Park have never attended a boxing match before tonight. They have come not for the sport, but for the woman who transformed it. Pop group Westlife fills the arena before the first bell; a spine-chilling a cappella rendition of the Irish ballad Grace stills the crowd; the national anthem follows.