World champion Amy Broadhurst has revealed that the call up from Katie Taylor's camp last year resurrected her career.
Broadhurst was at a low ebb in late 2021, early 2022 and a series of disappointments had made her consider his future in the ring.
Then Taylor's management team got in contact in February of last year. Within a month, Broadhurst was heading Stateside for two weeks of sparring with Taylor ahead of the Serrano fight.
READ MORE: Katie Taylor to finally reunite with Irish boxing trailblazer at her homecoming fight
"Obviously it was a snowball effect from there everything just flipped over," smiled Broadhurst.
She became a world champion that May.
"Before Christmas that year, there was just nothing working out for me," she explained. "We were supposed to go to the World championships and they were cancelled (due to Covid).
"There was nothing going the right way. Even after Christmas I was meant to go to Strandja and got Covid a few days before. I hadn’t competed in two years and that set me back again.
"Everything I thought boxing was for me, getting to the Olympic Games, just didn’t seem within touching distance for me at all. I wasn’t close to it.
"I went to speak to a psychologist because mentally I just wasn’t 100%. I also had thought of going over and competing for GB.
"Not many people will be happy to hear that - but I was trying to do anything I could do to get to the Olympic Games."
Her dad, Tony, is English and Broadhurst spoke to GB's High Performance director while she was at a training camp in Sheffield in October 2021.
"They said they'd be happy to have me," said Broadhurst. "I told them I would speak to them after the World championships and said, ‘listen, leave it for now, park the bus'.
"Then I obviously went to the World championships and won."
Her participation in the Taylor camp came before that. Off the flight to Boston, she was chauffeur driven to the camp in Vernon for two weeks of sparring.
She recalled the moment she felt her luck was changing.
"Aw like, I remember I was sitting in my room, it was early and they didn't even say would you like to come and spar, they just said 'can you pass me on your number, we'd like to speak to you about Katie's upcoming fight'," said the Dundalk boxer.
"Well, straight away I knew. I went into my parents and I was like, 'I'm after getting this email' and it just went from there - nothing that had happened before Christmas even crossed my mind.
"I was focused on that and then I knew when I came back that I was going to Romania and then after that it was the Worlds, so it was just ongoing then. It revitalised me.
"I think we did every second day, we either did sparring or we did school of combat and it was the 10 two minute rounds. It benefited me a lot as well.
"It's basically like sparring but they might tell you that you can only throw two punches, and that's all you can throw for the round and anything more then you're doing it wrong, or it could be lead hand free, just your jab. So it's specific."
Taylor's coach Ross Enamait wasn't looking for Broadhurst to box like Serrano.
"It was just to be myself," she recalled. "I think there was only one day in one of the rounds that I was probably on the back foot a little bit more and Ross just said, 'go forward a bit more'.
"But other than that every day was fine and they were happy with how I was doing. And obviously physically, I'd be taller than her (Serrano) as well."
Broadhurst's first encounter with Taylor happened in 2012. She was 15 and had just won her first junior European championship.
Taylor had won the gold medal at the London Olympics that same year and the Bray sensation came to Broadhurst's school, Colaiste Rís, to congratulate her.
The following year, Team Ireland brought the Juniors, Youths and the Elites to the European Unions in Hungary so they were on the same team together.
"Obviously when Katie turned pro then, that was it, I didn't see her for a while," Broadhurst said. "And then last year started it up again."
The two Irish women got to know each other properly over the course of the fortnight in the States and a strong friendship has developed.
"Even all year she's just been shouting my praise," said Broadhurst.
"And when I lost the Elites this year, she was one of the first people to text me and she said a lot of her success came off the losses and she said to use it as a springboard to do better and I did because I went and won Strandja.
"So the friendship is there and I'm very, very lucky to have her backing me and to have her involved in my career."
Broadhurst will be ringside on Saturday and is "buzzing" at the prospect of the historic fight night as Taylor attempts to become a two-weight world champion in this super-lightweight title fight against Chantelle Cameron.
"The only danger, really, is Chantelle's size," said the 2022 light-welterweight World champion, who followed in the footsteps of five-time winner Taylor and Kellie Harrington when she topped the podium in Istanbul.
"But Katie is willing to die in the ring and I think if she was coming up against someone that was 6'5" and was built like a tank, she still wouldn't care.
"But I do think that if she stands her ground then she is giving Chantelle an opportunity because Chantelle is looking to come and stand and fight because that's all she has, she can't really box the way Katie can box.
"That's the only way I can see Chantelle having the chance of not only winning but just having any sort of chance."
So what is most impressive about Taylor, her courage and will to win or her technical ability?
"It's everything," said the 26-year-old.
"When I went over I learned so much from her, the way she thinks. She even gave me advice coming back to the High Performance on what way to carry myself and everything.
"I remember flying home and I thought, 'What a woman' because no matter how hard you hit her, she'll still keep coming. You throw the kitchen sink at her 10 times and she's still there.
"And it showed with Serrano, in the fifth round Katie looked out on her feet and then she came back and that just shows the type of person that she is.
"In and out of the ring, she's brilliant."
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