The magnificent Katie Taylor made no progress toward her ultimate goal of unifying the fractured world lightweight championship on Saturday night, but the popular Irish title-holder did nothing to curb her meteoric ascent up boxing’s paying ranks in her scintillating Madison Square Garden debut.

The 2012 Olympic gold medalist did not simply outbox and outclass Finland’s Eva Wahlström in a meeting of erstwhile amateur rivals on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Álvarez and Rocky Fielding: Taylor won every minute of every round against a previously undefeated world champion during a clinical and occasionally shocking beatdown. All three ringside judges scored it a 100-90 shutout, as did the Guardian.

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Taylor (12-0, 5 KOs), all business during a crowd-pleasing entrance to the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, used fluid in-and-out movement and blinding hand speed to keep Wahlström on the back foot from the opening bell, picking her spots with sharp, accurate punches upstairs before opening up with effective body combinations toward the end of first round amid “Olé, Olé, Olé” chants that cascaded down from the mezzanine.

In the second Taylor’s left hook continued to find purchase on the welt that had already appeared under the the right eye of Wahlström (22-1-1, 3 KO), the WBC’s champion at 130lbs who was moving up a division to challenge for Taylor’s WBA and IBF lightweight belts. The Bray fighter’s ring intelligence was on full display as she unpredictably alternated the head and body attack to keep Wahlström uncertain and tentative while taking away her opponent’s left hand, exposing her lack of a plan B.

“That was exactly the idea,” Taylor said afterward. “[Trainer Ross Enamait] saw that she had a good left jab and if we shut that down right away we’d have the fight won.”

By the end of the sixth Taylor was in total control and Wahlström, already a bit gun-shy from the start, had tasted the power of her naturally bigger opponent and either wouldn’t or couldn’t offer a meaningful response. Taylor grew more emboldened in the seventh, stepping into the pocket for longer stretches and unloading with further educated combinations and flurries to the body.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ireland’s Katie Taylor retained her IBF and WBA lightweight titles by a lopsided unanimous decision. Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP

But as Taylor clearly pressed for the knockout in the final rounds, pouring on the punishment as the partisan crowd broke out into chants of “Ka-tie! Ka-tie!”, Wahlström held on, at times literally, in full survival mode until the final bell, no doubt benefitting from the condensed two-minute rounds on the women’s circuit.

The performance earned rave reviews from Anthony Joshua, the unified heavyweight champion who afterward paid a visit to Taylor’s dressing room, where the promotional stablemates discussed her comprehensive performance and exchanged thoughts on the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder fight earlier this month.

Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) Nice moment between Olympic champions @anthonyfjoshua and @KatieTaylor in the dressing room after her win at @TheGarden tonight. pic.twitter.com/DUfzYyIWld

Afterward Taylor, one of the most decorated female amateur boxers in history, re-affirmed her long-held goal of consolidating the four lightweight title belts. That task will require matches with Belgium’s Delfine Persoon, the former kickboxer who holds the WBC strap, and Brazil’s Rose Volante, the WBO champion.

Ireland’s happy warrior said on Saturday the Volante fight will likely come first: on a 16 March card in Philadelphia to be headlined by Tevin Farmer, who successfully defended his IBF super featherweight title for a second time in Saturday’s co-main event.

Taylor, now based in the small Connecticut town of Vernon about 120 miles north-east of Manhattan, also floated the prospect of moving up to face Norway’s Cecilia Brækhus, the longtime undisputed champion at 147lbs regarded for much of the decade as the pound-for-pound world No 1, saying that a summit meeting could be made at 140lbs but that any fight beyond that limit would be a bridge too far. What a scrap that would be. Another possibility amid an emerging bull market for women’s boxing is the cocksure Puerto Rican veteran Amanda Serrano, a six-division champion who currently holds the WBO title at light welterweight and who derided Taylor as a “pillow puncher” moments after Saturday’s fight.

“That’s a huge, huge fight,” Taylor said. “Let’s get it on.”