Time for women's boxing to break icy hold on Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden, the home of New York sport, the Mecca of boxing; and if the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.

Katie Taylor has had 20 professional fights since turning pro in 2016, yet somehow, the most recognised and celebrated Irish sports star of a generation has yet to exhibit that boxing brilliance on home soil.

A tale of strange circumstance and bad timing, as the professional boxing game in Ireland has had some real soul searching to undertake over the past few years, ever since a low-key boxing weigh-in turned into a high-profile bloodbath on the not-so mean streets of Drumcondra in Dublin.

There has been blue skies in New York City all week, and the clouds also appear to be shifting back home where talk of an eventual Katie homecoming clash appears to be gathering momentum and will surely move up a notch if the Bray native takes care of business at the Garden tonight.

Three-thousand miles from home, and yet to paraphrase the great Phil Chevron, "thousands are once again sailing, across the western ocean, to this land and an opportunity to see the one they have never seen".

The journey from JFK to Manhattan takes you on the AirTrain from the airport to Jamaica in Queens, before switching to the subway, where a direct line takes you all the way to Penn Station and spits you out into the heart of the tourist-thronged, midtown madness.

And yet as you haul your suitcase up the final subway steps and into the New York night, you are welcomed to the city with the green and white illuminations of the iconic Madison Square Garden, a perfect circle of sporting history in a town full of rectangles and straight lines.

The Garden has been home to the New York Rangers all week, with