There was a pong of horseshit off the scoring as Katie Taylor exited the World Championships at the semi-final stage in May.
The iconic Bray lightweight was adjudged to have been edged by France's Estelle Mossely in her final four clash in Astana, Kazakhstan, dropping a split decision on count-back which meant she would remain level with Indian Mary Kom on five world golds.
Two of the judges scored the fight even at two rounds apiece but rather bizarrely gave Mossely the nod, rendering a third judge's 40-36 score in Taylor's favour null and void. In truth, though, that 4-0 sweep to the Irishwoman was more farcical than the two cards which accompanied it.
In an extremely tight contest, a gasping Taylor was forced to dig deep in the third - the only round which you could suggest she definitively lost. Naturally, all three judges awarded the round to Taylor, with a resurgent fourth round leading most punters and scribes to believe she'd done enough to reach her sixth consecutive world final. This was closely-contested 3-1 or 2-2 type of fight, but one which Taylor most certainly shaded.
It should no longer be considered a major shock when we find Katie Taylor on the wrong end of judges' decisions, and it's not because she's 'on the decline', as might be suggested by passers-by to the sport following her most recent defeat.
The gap between the five-time world champion and her chasing pack is no longer closing. It was closing in 2012 when Taylor earned a mildly controversial decision over Russia's Sofya Ochigava.
It has now been slammed shut.
To put this new-found depth of quality in the women's lightweight division into context, Taylor's bete noire in April's Olympic qualifier, Azerbaijan's Yana Alekseevna (who had pushed Taylor to the brink on two occasions prior to her upset victory), didn't even join Taylor in the World semi-finals 10 weeks ago, bowing out to Mossely a round earlier.
Each year since its Olympic debut in London, women's amateur boxing has seen a monumental increase in both participation and funding, particularly in the USA and Britain. Katie Taylor was a trailblazer but the world is now hot on her heels. Simply put, there are now world-rated lightweights who can match and beat her in a one-off contest.
Add to this the fact that a mammoth proportion of judges in amateur boxing are famously shitty at their jobs.
Taylor, like many great champions, rode the crest of an unbeaten wave which, by simple human nature, doubtless embedded itself in the subconscious of judges who have awarded Ireland's golden girl similar victories to Mossely's in the past.
When a fighter sustains an unbeaten and illustrious run for as long as she did, judges, just like fans, begin to believe said fighter can't be defeated. Or, perhaps more pertinently, they lean on the side of the 'indomitable' narrative in the case of a razor-tight round or overall contest. More often than not, special pugilistic talents such as Floyd Mayweather, or in the past six years Taylor, will find themselves beneficiaries of the occasional close call.
At the risk of playing devil's advocate, it may even have played a part in Taylor's narrow defeat of Ochigava to make history in London. And that by no means discredits her long-spanning dominance or plethora of achievements; in boxing, it's simply part of the deal when you're as good as she has been. An intrinsic characteristic of the sport, the benefit of the doubt can be as effective as a solid jab. And much like a physical skill, it's earned, not gifted.
But a sluggish defeat to Yana Alekseevna back in April - Taylor's first reversal since 2011 - proved to her competitors and the boxing world that she is in fact mortal, not mythical.
Her freight train-like momentum has in recent months skidded to a halt and, as such, that aura of invincibility has now evaporated; Katie Taylor is beatable, and just like her fellow mortals, she is now susceptible to suffer the slings and arrows of occasionally outrageous judging - both in Rio and beyond.
And yet, even allowing for her two defeats in as many months this past spring, one would be ill-advised to back against Bray's finest in Brazil this summer.
The great fighters are constantly adapting to both age and circumstance; 25 fights into the aforementioned Floyd Mayweather's career, he was a combo-punching knockout artist. Taylor, too, started as an aggressor as she cut off the ring and landed flurries from mind-bending angles - the kind of offensive style that can suck the soul from an opponent after two rounds.
In recent years, however, Taylor's fight patterns have almost followed those of the professional pound-for-pound great; whilst still oozing class in terms of shot selection, her punch output has lessened greatly and she has stood off opponents, waiting for them to slip up. Waiting too long, on occasion. It was this tentative approach which saw her come unstuck against the slightly more active Alekseevna in Baku.
What a relief it was, then, to see her fire with such venom in her first three contests of May's World Championships, as she systematically dismantled Swedish, Argentinian and Mexican opposition respectively en route to her semi-final with Mossely. But a rapid return to her almost belligerent in-ring best had conspicuously taken its physical toll, with the Irish icon blowing hard halfway through her fourth fight inside a week.
Now 30, Taylor has been boxing at eite international level for over a decade. Her energy-conservative style of the past two to three years wasn't an accident, it was an adjustment - conscious or otherwise.
A fourth World Championship fight in five days back in May ultimately stifled some of her explosive work from the earlier stages, but it's worth noting that in Rio, the defending champion will start from the quarter-final stage as the reigning World no.1 - this as opposed to a Round of 32 starting line in Azerbaijan at the start of the summer. In essence, if Katie Taylor is to recapture gold in Rio, she'll need to win just three fights.
In Astana, an initially spectacular return to form before her clash with Mossely proved her more than capable of maintaining near-best form over the course of such a short format. With an extra two months' conditioning and preparation with Zaur Antia now in the bank, the Golden Girl will be primed and ready for combat down Copacabana way.
Between 2008 and early 2016, Katie Taylor was both metaphorically and literally a flag-bearer for her craft; a poster woman, an unconquerable icon, a god. She has since been reduced to merely the most talented - and formidable - female in a star-studded 60kg field of world class athletes.
The eyes of a nation will turn to Rio in hope rather than the expectation of London four years ago. Taylor herself, however, travels in expectation. Where four years ago she carried the weight of a nation she will instead find a chip, having been wronged by the judges in Kazakhstan and doubted by the boxing public. She will need to win three fights to blaze a new trail as both an Olympic and boxing legend.
You'd have to pity whoever draws her in the quarter-finals on August 12th.
