SECURITY around the Katie Taylor fight in Dublin this weekend is set to be one of the biggest operations in the city in recent years.
Taylor will face Chantelle Cameron on Saturday night at Dublin's 3 Arena with reports suggesting that Gardai will be joined by protection officers from across the UK and ex-military as well as security personnel from the Republic.
It will be the first major boxing event to be held in Dublin since the Regency Hotel Clash of the Clans weigh-in of February 2016, in which David Byrne was murdered.
Security is also set to be tight at the ticket-only weigh in on Friday, with a media conference today also set to be heavily secured.
Disagreement over security costs scuppered Taylor's hopes of making her homecoming at Croke Park.
But Taylor, undisputed champion at lightweight, now steps up to 140lbs against the also-unbeaten Englishwoman in what has been billed as a “history-making” fight by the Liffey.
Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn has dismissed the reports about the high level of security and said extra security personnel has not been flown in large numbers.
"Really, I have seen some rubbish," he told The Mirror.
"Listen, of course, everybody in this country wants to make sure that the event goes ahead smoothly.
"So in that respect the eyes of the world are on this fight and are on Dublin.
"We have not really spent additional...I saw somebody say we are flying in (security). I don’t know.
"Of course we have security. We have security wherever we go.
"We've just been to Guadalajara where we had three times the security that we have in Dublin this week.
"But, at the same time, the only thing that has been different is maybe the public events have been capped a little bit.
"We would have liked to push out that a bit more. We had 5,000 ticket requests for the weigh-in but at the moment we are only allowed 300 people.
"Those talks are ongoing. Don’t forget it is the first one and the biggest one you ever had - it's bigger than the Bernard Dunne fight. So people just want to get involved.
"Everybody feels comfortable but no, there hasn’t been an excessive spend on security. It's not anything like Guadalajara."
