Betting Odds Released for Katie Taylor v Kimberly Connor
Irish fighter Katie Taylor has emerged in the early markets as the unbackable odds-on favourite in her bout against mandatory challenger Kimberly Connor at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday 28 July.
This will be the tenth professional fight for Taylor, who is the unified WBA and IBF Lightweight World Champion, and will be part of the undercard for the Dillian Whyte (UK) v Joseph Parker (NZ) heavyweight title bout.
The best price you can get on the 32-year-old from Bray is a miserly 1-41 with Marathon Bet, although as Danny Lewis, a writer on playright.co.uk points out, most boxing betting sites are only offering odds of 1-100 on a Taylor win. The best price on challenger Connor is 25-1, although she is as low as 16-1 with some sports books, while you can currently get 35-1 on the draw with Sporting Bet. Alternatively, if you want to back Taylor on the Draw No Bet market, you can at this stage get 1-80 with Betfair and PaddyPower, or 12-1 on Connor.
Given the fighters’ respective track records and current form — Taylor has a 9-0 professional record, with 4 wins by knockout — it is hard to make a case for saying the bookies have got it wrong. Taylor’s camp too would seem to be supremely confident, given that her next scheduled fight, in Chicago on 6 October against Puerto Rico’s Cindy Serrano, is already being billed as a world title defense.
Kimberly Connor, the 37-year-old challenger from Little Rock, Arkansas, has a fairly undistinguished record as a pro, and her task will be made more difficult by the fact that this will be her first fight in a year. Her record of 13 wins, 3 losses and 2 draws from her 18 fights is solid, although she lost on a unanimous points decision in a previous attempt to take the IBF World Lightweight title against Argentina’s Victoria Noelia Bustos in March 2017. Connor won her last fight on points against fellow American Jasmine Clarkson in July 2017.
Taylor, on the other hand, comes into the fight in outstanding form. The 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist defeated Bustos on a unanimous points decision in April of this year in New York in a highly convincing performance, following on from a hard-fought victory on points against Jessica McCaskill from the US in December 2017. Other recent wins include a unanimous points decision victory against Argentina’s Anahi Sánchez in October 2017 that gave Taylor the WBA World Lightweight title, a TKO win in the third round against American Jasmine Clarkson in July 2017, and a seventh round TKO win against German fighter Nina Meinke earlier that year in April.
Given the fact that Taylor has had a solid schedule of fights over the past twelve months and Connor hasn’t been in the ring for a year, if the defending champion were to lose it would be an upset of monumental proportions. Her odds-on favourite status is well-deserved, and so for punters it would be advisable to look elsewhere on the card for value, as the prohibitively short price on Taylor surely precludes having a bet on her.
