Katie Taylor needs to prove she is the fighter the world thinks she is in her re-match against Delfine Persoon this Saturday night.
That's the view of Brian Campbell from CBS Sports as the Bray woman gets set to take on Persoon in Eddie Hearn's back yard at the weekend.
Taylor won a majority decision against her Belgian opponent last year in what was deemed by many to be a controversial decision by the judges at Madison Square Garden.
The re-match takes place on the undercard of Dillian Whyte's heavyweight tussle with Alexander Povetkin, and Campbell says the decision last year only adds to the pressure on Ireland's 2012 Olympic champion.
"This fight was a surprise to a lot of us on the American side. We know all about Katie Taylor, all about the amateur pedigree, the spot that she's carved out for herself as a national hero, and the potential face of women's boxing.
"To see the [first] fight unfold the way it did, in which you had a fearless fighter in Delfine Persoon go out there and not just really be responsible for making the crazy, frenetic, fight-of-the-year contender that it was, but most importantly, going in there against one of the most skilled female boxers on this planet.
"We give Katie Taylor a tonne of credit for the way she was the matador to that crazy bull in Delfine Persoon, but at the end of the day, I was not alone ringside in scoring that fight for Persoon."
Campbell also told OTB AM that Taylor will need more than just her extraordinary skill-set to get her past a hungry Persoon on this occasion.
"We needed to see this. We needed to see if Katie Taylor truly is of that ilk. Was this one rough night at the office? Two of the three judges gave her the nod, I'm not taking that away from her at all.
"But from what I saw, what a lot of people saw... She was forced to fight a style and a pace that just wasn't healthy. Who else are you going to find on the planet to be able to instil that kind of attack in Delfine Persoon, who has the background of police officer by day and just a fearless boxer by night?
"She comes in there, walks right into oncoming traffic, squares up, and basically says 'If you're going to beat me, you're going to have to kill me, you're going to have to beat me on my terms.'
"To Taylor's credit, she was able to make that close, she was able to survive, I thought she got rocked in that final round, I thought she was hanging on for dear life.
19 August 2020; Katie Taylor during a media day at Matchroom Fight Camp in Brentwood, Essex, England, in advance of her Undisputed Lightweight Championship bout against Delfine Persoon on Saturday night. Photo by Mark Robinson / Matchroom Boxing via Sportsfile"She was certainly the more skilled fighter, she was able to dig her heels in, and have those pockets of combinations and show us what all the hullabaloo was about in terms of her skill-set.
"She also had the heart to back it up, but now she's got to come out here a second time, and I think the most intriguing part of this re-match is we certainly want to see Persoon get that second chance of a fight a lot of us thought she won, but we want to see what type of fight adjustments the great Katie Taylor can make.
"This is not a normal style and aggressive package you're going up there against. Katie Taylor can typically out-skill most of her opponents - this fight may not come down to skill.
"She may have to step in there earlier and prove that she's the bigger puncher, that she has the bigger heart, that she's just the bigger everything, against an opponent who seemingly has nothing to lose here and got a second chance at making her name."
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