Conor McGregor praises Katie Taylor as ‘Irish hero’

Conor McGregor is known as a bombastic trash talker, controversial to the core, a guy with few public good things to say about fellow fighters, particularly potential opponents.

But with Katie Taylor, it’s another story. McGregor attended Taylor’s fight in Boston this past weekend, where she shut out Cindy Serrano to retain her lightweight titles, and then posted a video meeting up with her backstage on Instagram:

McGregor praised Taylor as an “Irish hero” and expressed great admiration for her, which he also did in another Instagram post:

McGregor, who is a fighter-businessman with few peers, is clearly rooting for Taylor (10-0, 5 KO) to get big money fights, and she is no doubt quickly becoming one of the biggest stars in women’s boxing today.

There’s still a long way to go for women’s boxing to receive any real mainstream attention in the U.S., but we’ve seen fighters like Taylor, Cecilia Braekhus, Claressa Shields, and Heather Hardy, among others, start to break through at least a little with American boxing fans, and that’s been really encouraging. With their careers becoming easier for the more average boxing fan to follow, that means there’s more discussion of the women’s side of the sport, which is a great thing.