There’s been a steady show of professionalism for three and a half years, but at this point Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano are sick of each other. Tired of each other’s faces. Sick of the creeping doubt each brings to the other, all the perceptions and interpretations and explanations tied to their previous meetings.
At this point, when Serrano hears the honking Irish accent, her pupils turn black. And when Taylor hears words like “robbery” and “head-butt,” she swings the sledgehammer that much harder at the tire.
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This is what a rivalry should look like. This is what the rivalry in women’s boxing is. Contempt. Quiet disdain that saves it for the ring. A fiery southpaw from Puerto Rico against a national treasure from Ireland who fights orthodox. Full nations rallying around their fighter. Legacies making up the stakes.
Judges controlling the fates.
This last part is where the plot thickens, of course, and the reason we are here. Heading into the trilogy, Taylor is 2-0, which under ordinary circumstances wouldn’t be grounds for a third fight. Yet it is. Taylor will likely be the betting underdog come Friday night, because a hell of a lot of people think Serrano — who out-struck Taylor by more than 100 punches in Dallas last November — won the rematch.
Plenty thought she won the first bout, too. The fights, both instant classics, have been that close. And if you mention any of this to fight fans — from Paddy Reilly’s in Manhattan to Castle Hill in the Bronx, from the Blarney Castle to Crash Boat Beach — emotions run high.
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Taylor, who won a gold medal for her country at the 2012 Olympics, doesn’t want to hear about being a dirty fighter. A good portion of the 65 million people who tuned in for Jake Paul’s fight with Mike Tyson last November on Netflix from Dallas were mesmerized by the Fight of the Year that went on before it. They saw the head-butts. They saw the cut above Serrano’s eye. They heard the commentary. They heard Rosie Perez place an “asterisk” on Taylor’s legacy, seeing the most-viewed women’s fight in history end in what she considered an injustice.
Deliberate head-butt or incidental clash of heads? See, that’s the debate. A righty versus southpaw can naturally bring heads together, yet it separates ways of thinking.
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All of this has carried the story forward. The cut along Serrano’s eyebrow that threatened the entire fight from the second round was a lasting image. The fact that Serrano fought the fight of a lifetime anyway? It made emotions run higher. And in the eighth round, when the referee took a point from Taylor for recurring head-butts, emotions ran higher still.
Especially as Taylor walked out of Dallas carrying all those belts. Just when the spotlight hit women’s boxing in the biggest way possible, Serrano came out with stitches, while the champ came out with the black eye.
So they do it again. One more time.
Katie Taylor (left) is 2-0 in her series with Amanda Serrano, though both fights were agonizingly close.
(Sarah Stier via Getty Images)
The world of women’s boxing wasn’t born through Taylor and Serrano, but it has certainly roared to life. Together they’ve created one of combat sport’s best pieces of drama over the past couple of years with those impossibly close, highly visible encounters, where most of the late action has taken place on the brink. In the deep water, where they’ve dragged each other. Outside mortal comfort zones.
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How do you even top what’s already happened? The expanded sense of awe? For 24 rounds they’ve tried to be rid of each other for good, only to end up binding themselves together forever. And together they’ve gotten rich. Together they’ve been through hell. That’s what rivals do.
Not unlike Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, the great champions who line the walls at Madison Square Garden, where Taylor and Serrano met in 2022 for the first time. That first fight was billed as a major breakthrough for boxing, to have two women headlining a massive card at the Mecca. It ended up becoming the beginning of something far greater.
The first women’s rivalry to truly captivate the combat world’s imagination.
That night MSG was split between two hysterias as the fight swung back and forth — the Puerto Rican fans waving their flags, and the Irish tricolor waving right alongside with them. The fanbases took turns drowning each other out, creating a madrigal effect in the heart of New York City. It almost didn’t matter who won. The thing that mattered was that they do it again.
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They did, and it’s hard to believe Taylor and Serrano 2 outdid that first fight.
Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano 2, just like their first fight, was an instant classic.
(Al Bello via Getty Images)
If anything, Taylor and Serrano have set the bar far too high … and yet, you get the feeling the third fight will exceed expectations. Taylor, who early on wanted to get fights so bad that she pretended to be a boy, carries a chip on her shoulder in her twilight. For the first time in years she will have her father back in her corner. She wants to make things emphatic this time through.
The 36-year-old Serrano, who’s dealt with the losses, represents the more human side to the Paul enterprise. It was her who balanced things when Paul fought the 58-year-old Tyson, as the face of merit and true legitimacy, and we haven’t stopped talking about her rivalry with Taylor since.
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Why?
Because these fights have been about something more than skill. They’ve been about will, perseverance and identity. Respect is at the heart of it, and that’s why they can’t stand to think of each other anymore. They are sick and tired of talking about each other. They are so familiar that they understand the extent of each other’s depths.
And that’s not even what bothers them. What bothers them is knowing how far they themselves are prepared to go to be the one left standing.
That kind of thing makes for one hell of a closing chapter to the biggest rivalry we’ve seen in women’s boxing.
