Katie Taylor back to winning ways after Wembley victory

In the end it didn't last as long as her amateur fights. Katie Taylor followed the simple instructions given to her in a hall of 3,000 curious onlookers, many of them sceptics, a large rump of them fans but all unsure of how the evening would unfold.

With a few tricolours around shoulders and a short pre-fight rendition of The Fields of Athenry, the build-up was considerably longer than the four minutes 58 seconds it took the five times amateur world champion to dispose of Karina Kopinska.

It’s a brutal term but disposal fits the nature of the one-sided debut in the SSE Wembley Arena. There was a flurry of combinations from Taylor in the opening concussive bars of the third movement and a back-tracking Kopinska, who could go no further than the ropes of her own corner.

From that precarious retreat, it was how much punishment the referee would allow before drawing the line between a debut win for Taylor and a beating for Kopinska. He wisely stepped in.

World championship

It is forward momentum for Taylor, back to her winning ways after a year of confusion and disillusionment. Some lost ground has been regained but she will never truly be back to where she was until a world championship belt is around her waist.

Her team and promoter Eddie Hearn are wasting no time in putting together the scaffolding for that relatively short project. Within five or six fights, they believe, the world championship opportunity will present itself. Hopefully this summer, hopefully Dublin.

By that stage they believe she will have enough converts to her blend of speed, power and purpose. The old Katie has returned.

“She wasn’t really up to much,” said a candid Taylor of her third-round stoppage against the Pole. “That’s always the way when you turn pro, the first few fights are . . . the other opponent isn’t as good as international amateur opponents,”

“I’m getting the good-quality opponents when I’m sparring so it is not as if my form is dropping at all. I’m getting the best of sparring out in America and I’m feeling very, very sharp.”

The win, regardless of the quality of Kopinska, who now has seven wins from 25 fights, is a full stop to a losing spree that had consumed Taylor since the beginning of the year. It also pushes the inconvenient and troublesome elephant in the room, Rio, further into distant memory. In that game a win is a win is a win.

Olympics

“You have to mention the Olympics,” she says laughing, a contrast to the gaunt, confused figure that left the arena as a defeated Olympic champion.

“It’s definitely been a disappointing year, so it’s nice to hopefully end this year on a high. I have to keep my head down for this fight in a couple of weeks. I can’t get too carried away.”

In two weeks' time in Manchester she will face her second professional challenge on the undercard of Anthony Joshua, Britain's brightest heavyweight star and London gold medallist.

There will be over 20,000 fans, twice the size of the crowd in London's ExCel arena, where she won Olympic gold in 2012, and bigger than the Bernard Dunne world title fight in Dublin's O2 Arena against Ricardo Cordoba, where Taylor featured on the undercard in March 2009.

“It’s going to be incredible to box on this big undercard,” she says. “It’s the stuff of dreams really. When I started boxing I wanted to box in front of thousands of people. Now I have the opportunity.”

Her opponent for that bout will be named on Monday or Tuesday. She’s up and running. Again.