Katie Taylor relationship status confirmed by dad Pete after family rift

The news comes after speculation that she had tied the knot before her trilogy with Amanda Serrano

Pete Taylor has confirmed that his daughter Katie is now married. This comes after speculation that the boxing champion had tied the knot, having been spotted wearing a ring on her wedding finger in the lead-up to her trilogy victory over Amanda Serrano last month.

“Ever since the fight there with Katie, people are seeing the two of us back together, even some of the s*** you hear about that,” Pete told James English on his podcast ‘Anything Goes’. “I was reading somewhere that Katie Taylor never got married because of her father, he wouldn’t let her…Katie’s married, you know, and I’m thinking, ‘where are you getting this s*** from?'”.

Taylor senior also revealed to English the details behind the family fallout that led to Katie dropping him from her coaching setup before the Rio Olympics in 2016 – coming after the triumph of claiming gold at London 2012.

“I split with Katie’s ma two years, maybe a year after the Olympics,” Taylor said. “Katie’s really into her faith as well and I just remember Katie coming down to the boxing club and she says, ‘I just don’t want you in the corner, you and ma are not together’,” reports the Irish Mirror.

“I’m married now to Karen, and Karen’s the same age as Katie and everybody was saying Pete’s turned around for Katie’s best friend, but they didn’t even know each other.

“In social media and in the papers it was, ‘Katie Taylor’s best friend’. For me it’s an insult, it sounds like ‘Katie’s been best friends with this girl since her childhood, you’ve bleedin’ groomed her’. But she didn’t know her, but that grows legs then. Just rumours and rumours and rumours.

“She has such morals, she has such faith and thinks that when you’re married you should be together for life. It killed me now, but I had to respect it because she did a documentary after and said, ‘when I went training it was like I was fighting with only one hand because my da wasn’t there’. She knew what the consequences would be, she lost in the Olympics in 2016 in Rio.”

Pete revealed it was an extremely difficult period and insisted he had been painted as the bad guy by Ireland’s press.

“We weren’t really speaking,” he said regarding his bond with Katie during the Rio Games.

“It was tough for both of us but that’s life.

“Because we were always together it was a big thing in the newspapers, you’d think I was the only person who ever split up a marriage and when Katie got beaten I was painted as the villain. It made me a pure villain in Ireland but that’s life, they used to makeup stories about me on a bad news day. It was tough at the time.”

He also recalled the preparation and bouts at London 2012 as an extremely high-pressure period.

“She’s not lost in 17 major competitions or something, and if we silver medal it would have been a disappointment for everybody in Ireland, and Ireland was going through a bad time,” he remembered.

“There was the financial crash in Ireland and everybody was depressed and I felt the hopes of Ireland were on the shoulders of the two of us. And there’s banners all over Dublin saying Katie Taylor, gold medal London, she’ll win a gold medal. Jesus, some pressure it was.

“It was not enjoyable. The Olympics was not one bit enjoyable – it was just pressure. You know, even after Katie won the goal, for me, it was just relief.”