On a damp Dublin week seven years ago, Flora Pili slipped into the National Boxing Stadium as just another visiting prospect. She left with bruises, lessons, and not a single win.
Now she walks into Croke Park.
From ‘Flora Pile’ to world champion
Back in April 2017, the IABA website listed her as “Flora Pile” of France, a teenage opponent for Kellie Harrington in an International Elite Round Robin. The typo suited the mood. It was a rough introduction to Irish rings.
Harrington beat her 5-0. Irma Testa, another future Olympic medallist, beat her twice. Three fights, three defeats. A sobering week on the South Circular Road that could easily have broken a young fighter’s belief.
It didn’t.
Pili had pedigree at home. French Youth Champion in 2015, then French Senior National Champion at Super Lightweight in 2019. The raw material was always there, even if the international results didn’t shout it.
Outside France, her amateur record barely registered: no Olympics, no medals, a European Under-22 quarter-final in 2019 and little else. On paper, she looked like hundreds of others who pass through the system and fade away.
She chose a different route. Late in 2019, at 21, she turned professional.
An unbeaten run in the shadows
Since that switch, she has done the one thing every contender must: win. Twelve fights, twelve victories. No defeats, no draws, no shortcuts.
Most of those nights took place far from the sport’s bright lights. Small halls in France. One trip to Rumelange in Luxembourg. Another to Padua in Italy. The kind of venues where careers are built quietly, without fanfare or cameras, where a world title still feels like fantasy.
The last three bouts brought her back home, to Saint-Avold in the north-east of France, close to the German border. Familiar surroundings, familiar faces – but the stakes kept rising.
In December, everything changed. In Saint-Avold, she claimed the vacant IBO World Super Lightweight title, edging Serbia’s Jelena Janicijevic by majority decision. Not a coronation, not a demolition, but a hard, narrow win that still ended with a belt around her waist.
That strap is why her phone eventually rang.
The unknown in the biggest show
For most people in Ireland, Flora Pili might as well have been a misprint. She still doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. Outside the hardcore boxing reporters, her name means very little.
That changed in an instant at a Croke Park press conference in June. Reporters walked in, glanced at the backdrop, and saw it: “TAYLOR V PILI” splashed across the boards behind an empty top table.
In a stadium where Katie Taylor’s name needs no introduction, Pili’s felt like an intrusion. Who is she? Where has she come from? Why her?
Promoter Eddie Hearn reached for the history books. He reminded the room that Muhammad Ali was the last man to fight at Croke Park. In that story, Pili is cast in a familiar role: the Al “Blue” Lewis of the night, the underdog opponent whose name might one day surface in a quiz question to separate the obsessives from the casuals.
But that’s the outside view. Inside her camp, the call from Matchroom landed like a thunderclap.
‘This is not a boxing fight… it is a historic event’
Her Italian coach, Christian Cherchi, did not pretend otherwise. They were stunned.
“This is not a boxing fight... it is a historic event,” he said, recalling the moment they were contacted. The message was simple: would they be interested in fighting Katie Taylor?
There was no hesitation.
“I didn't even call Flora to ask. I said, ‘Yes, it will be an honour!’ Because it was a no-brainer.”
On Saturday, that snap decision walks out in front of tens of thousands.
At the Croke Park press conference, Hearn nudged Pili to speak in her own language. She addressed the room in French, Cherchi stepping in as interpreter. The words were straightforward, respectful, and quietly ambitious.
Yes, she has followed Taylor’s career. Yes, she knows what she is walking into. “She’s a legend of women’s sport,” came the message. Pili is coming with her team “to make a name” for herself.
From a misspelled teenager outclassed in a Dublin round robin to an unbeaten world champion sharing a bill with Katie Taylor at Croke Park. The Irish public may not know her yet.
By the time the lights go down on Saturday night, they will.
