Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano have thwacked one another with 861 punches across two punishing, brilliant encounters. There’s been not a single knockdown between them, nor an ounce of quit. And not, it seems, a shred of closure either. That will change, or so they hope, on Friday night in New York.
For the third and likely final time, two of boxing’s most decorated champions and fate-bound dance partners will meet inside the ropes, returning to Madison Square Garden, the site of their epochal 2022 classic, for what is being billed as the decisive chapter in a rivalry that helped transform women’s boxing. Taylor’s WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO junior welterweight titles are once again on the line. So is a legacy greater than any belts.
“This fight is even bigger than the last two,” Taylor said at Wednesday’s final press conference in midtown Manhattan. “To be headlining such a huge card, an all-female card, is an absolute privilege. I dreamt of this as a kid: headlining a show full of amazing women. It’s a history-making event.”
Quick Guide
Katie Taylor v Amanda Serrano III
Show
Who’s fighting
• Katie Taylor v Amanda Serrano, 10 rounds, for Taylor’s undisputed women’s junior welterweight championship
• Alycia Baumgardner v Jennifer Miranda, 10 rounds, for Baumgardner’s undisputed women’s junior lightweight championship
• Savannah Marshall v Shadasia Green, 10 rounds, for Marshall’s IBF women’s super middleweight title and Green’s WBO super middleweight title
• Chantelle Cameron v Jessica Camara, 10 rounds, for Cameron’s WBC women’s interim junior welterweight title
• Ellie Scotney v Yamileth Mercado, 10 rounds, for Scotney’s IBF and WBO women’s junior featherweight titles and Mercado’s WBC women’s junior featherweight title
• Cherneka Johnson v Shurretta Metcalf, 10 rounds, for Johnson’s WBA women’s bantamweight titles, Metcalf’s IBF women’s bantamweight title and the vacant WBC and WBO titles
• Ramla Ali v Lila Furtado, eight rounds, women’s junior featherweights
• Tamm Thibeault v Mary Casamassa, eight rounds, middleweights
How to watch
The broadcast will stream live globally on Netflix starting at 8pm ET (1am GMT) at no additional cost to subscribers. The broadcast will feature live commentary in English, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Brazilian Portuguese and French.
Taylor’s promoter-speak lands beyond the obligatory hyperbole. The bout is the main event of a seven-fight all-women’s card that will be freely available to Netflix’s roughly 300m subscribers around the world. And fittingly, the two fighters who broke the sport’s glass ceiling at the Garden two years ago, when organizers planned for a crowd of about 10,000 but were forced to open the entire arena due to unanticipated demand, are back to close the circle.
“I don’t think there’ll be a fourth fight,” Serrano said Wednesday. “I’m kind of tired of Katie Taylor. We’ve had great moments together, great fights together. … But two is better than one, right? She’ll have two, I’ll have one, and she can live with that.”
The 36-year-old Puerto Rican star isn’t being glib. She enters this fight 0-2 against Taylor, even if both decisions were disputed. Their first meeting at 135lb, the first time two women’s boxers headlined the Garden, ended in a split decision many saw as too close to call. The rematch last November at AT&T Stadium in Texas was marginally more decisive, Taylor’s cleaner shots outweighing Serrano’s relentless volume. But neither decision was without controversy.
Serrano, who suffered a deep cut above her eye in that second fight, believes she was fouled. Her trainer, Jordan Maldonado, accused Taylor of “leading with her head”, while Serrano herself doubled down post-fight. “She does it in every fight,” she said. “We knew that from the very beginning, from the first fight. That’s what they do.”
Taylor, for her part, has heard enough. “I’m just tired of the complaining and the whining from Amanda’s team,” she said. “I have my own opinion about the stuff Amanda has been saying, but the fact is I’m 2-0 against her. Opinions are opinions, but facts are facts. I plan to stay 3-0 come this Friday night.”
That smoldering tension has added a new edge to a rivalry once defined by mutual respect. But beneath the friction remains the core of what makes this so compelling: two elite operators with world-class engines and complementary styles that guarantee action from the first bell to the last. Serrano out-landed Taylor in both fights – 324 to 217 in the rematch by Compubox’s count – but Taylor absorbed the storm and returned fire with greater precision.
“I feel like people haven’t seen the best me yet,” Taylor said. “I can definitely make the fight a lot easier for myself and I just can’t wait to step in there and actually perform.”
Serrano, meanwhile, says she has adjusted her approach. “I’m going to use my head, but not the way it was used on me,” she said. “We’re going to be smarter. I worked a lot smarter for this fight and I believe we will come out victorious.”
At 39, Taylor (24-1, 6 KOs) has little left to prove. The 2012 Olympic champion is one of the few fighters in history, male or female, to have become an undisputed champion in two different weight classes. Since turning pro in 2016, she has fought and beaten nearly every top name of her era. But it is the flinty Nuyorican who stands as her defining foil.
Serrano (47-3-1, 31 KOs), who joined the paying ranks three years before women’s boxing was added to the Olympics and failed to benefit from the mainstream visibility it afforded, has worn belts in seven different weight classes from 115lb to 140lb, including an undisputed reign at featherweight. The Puerto Rico-born, Brooklyn-based southpaw is also fighting in her adopted hometown. “To win here, at the Garden, it would be amazing,” she said. “To bring those belts back over the bridge would be really cool.”
Still, she insists she never lost her confidence after Texas. “Losing is never fun, but you only lose if you feel like you lost,” she said. “And I didn’t feel like I lost. My team told me I didn’t lose. They’re proud of me, so I’m OK. Like [Serrano’s promoter] Jake Paul says: ‘You turn that L into a W.’”
Unknown to all but hardcore boxing fans for most of her career due to a lack of investment in female fighters by TV networks and promoters, Serrano was once paid $1,500 for a world title defense. Now she will reap another seven-figure purse while headlining the most loaded women’s boxing card ever assembled, with multiple undisputed and unified titles on the line. Alycia Baumgardner defends all four of her belts at super featherweight. Savannah Marshall, Ellie Scotney and Chantelle Cameron – the only fighter to beat Taylor as a professional – will all fight for world championships. The crowd-pleasing London-based Somali junior featherweight Ramla Ali is also booked for an eight-round non-title bout coming off her second career setback.
Both Taylor and Serrano have said they’re open to a fourth meeting, if necessary. But if Friday night goes to the scorecards again, and one woman emerges with a clean, uncontroversial victory, the book may finally close on the debate. “I just love the challenge,” Taylor said when asked why she accepted the trilogy despite winning the first two. “This was still the biggest fight in women’s boxing. Why not take it again?”
