IN 2018, KATIE Taylor took a fight in Boston with Cindy Serrano, older sister of long-mooted eventual opponent Amanda, with a view to luring ‘The Real Deal’ into the ring afterwards.
During the lead-up, however, Amanda Serrano stated her intention to migrate to MMA, citing the lack of paychecks commensurate to her ability in women’s professional boxing. It was, and to a degree remains, a fairly common pivot.
Taylor was fairly incensed and, for the first time publicly in her professional career, had some choice words for a counterpart.
“I think she’s mentally fragile at times,” the then-unified lightweight champion said of Serrano. “That’s what her biggest problem is, really. I don’t think she wants the big fights. Maybe she’s afraid to lose.”
Serrano has spoken ill of Taylor with more regularity over the years, both publicly during rarer interviews and from behind her Twitter account which is in fact run entirely by her trainer-manager, Jordan Maldonado; Serrano herself doesn’t even have a phone, and she stresses that point on occasion — as well as the fact that she’s never had a boyfriend — to illustrate her marriage to the sport of boxing.
Four years after a quiet fight with Cindy Serrano fanned the flames of Taylor and Amanda’s rivalry, what with Maldonado vowing in the ring that Amanda would succeed where her older sister had failed (which almost sparked a post-main event straightener between Maldonado and Taylor’s trainer, Ross Enamait), the fight described in 2018 by Taylor as “the biggest fight in women’s boxing” is now simply one of the biggest fights in boxing.
Somewhere in the region of 18,000 people are expected at Madison Square Garden tonight (ringwalks after 3am Irish time) and for the first time in a women’s bout, both fighters will pocket seven-figure purses, Serrano just over the million-dollar mark and Taylor closer to two million.
And the promotional build-up has seen both of tonight’s protagonists spend plenty of time in each other’s orbit — both back in February with tours of MSG and Wall Street, to this week’s joint interviews with NBC’s Today morning show, MMA reporter Ariel Helwani, and a promotional shoot atop the Empire State Building.
Taylor [20-0, 6KOS], however, insists that any animosity has been parked — at least until fists fly in the MSG ring tonight.
“Well, I wasn’t sitting down having dinner with her”, Taylor laughs, “but obviously, you’re involved with her at press conferences here and there. She seems very respectful. She seems like a great person. I have no badness towards her whatsoever. She’s just here to fight as well. I don’t think she’s a trash talker in any way. She’s just here for business.”
Indeed, while their boxing roads have been totally divergent — Taylor’s running through the Irish Elite amateur system, onto the Olympics and into the pros; Serrano’s winding solely through the wilderness that was women’s professional boxing until Taylor’s intrusion in 2016 — there are plenty of similarities to be found in the two longtime rivals.
“She’s been around a long, long time under the radar as well, and this is her moment on Saturday night,” Taylor notes of Serrano. “It’s funny: we come from two very small nations that are very strong boxing nations.
She’s coming from the heritage of Miguel Cotto, ‘Tito’ Trinidad… I’m coming from the likes of Barry McGuigan, Steve Collins, Wayne McCullough — these kind of fighters. We’ll bring all that heritage, all that pride into the ring on Saturday night.
“We both love our sport. We haven’t got anything handed to us that’s for sure. We’ve worked very hard behind the scenes for many years. I don’t think either of us are really interested in all the media side of things. We’re just interested in being the best fighter in the world.
About fucking time!
— Charlize Theron (@CharlizeAfrica) April 29, 2022
Only took 140 years to get 2 female fighters to headline MSG, but Katie Taylor & Amanda Serrano did the damn thing. You ladies inspire the hell out of me & women everywhere - cant wait to watch! #TaylorSerrano
🎥: @DAZNBoxing pic.twitter.com/oRKhOOgHZh
Seven-weight world-titlist Serrano [42-1-1, 30KOs], Taylor says, is “a legend of this sport and has been for a long time”.
“…I’m not going to call myself a legend,” she laughs, drawing an end to that particular comparison (and, indeed, sparking memories of her reaction to a proposal that a statue be erected in her honour in her hometown of Bray in 2019. “I thought statues were for when you were dead,” Taylor said at the time.)
Each fighter also has, with the greatest respect to Taylor’s promoter Eddie Hearn and Serrano’s de facto manager Jake Paul, a mouthpiece at their disposal who can do most of the verbal sparring for them.
The Matchroom Boxing chief and the YouTube sensation have jibed each other in good nature all week, with Paul publicly attempting to get Hearn to commit to a million-dollar bet as to which of their fighters will have her hand raised tonight. Hearn, for what it’s worth, was reluctant to shake Paul’s hand publicly but it’s understood that they have since come to an arrangement behind the scenes.
"I bet you all the jewellery that I'm wearing right now that Amanda wins the fight"
— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) April 28, 2022
ON THE LINE 👀@eddiehearn x @jakepaul#TaylorSerrano pic.twitter.com/DMgijkwNUW
At Friday’s electrifying weigh-in, Paul sounded a warning to Irish fans that the Serrano bout would “be the start of Katie’s losing streak, just like Conor McGregor.” It earned only a half-hearted boo from the hundreds of Irish fans present amid the cringe, while Taylor looked on with a wry smile from mere metres away.
“I guess I first became aware of Jake Paul when he had his first fight,” Taylor says. “Fight“, she repeats, adding her own airquotes before bursting into laughter.
“That’s my idea of trash talk!
I’m glad that he’s involved now to get this fight over the line… Originally I was thinking: ‘I hope I’m not on the undercard of a Jake Paul fight!’ That would have been an awful shame…
“But obviously, here we are headlining and Jake has been an absolute gentleman these last few months. I can’t say anything bad about him.”
This is about the most relaxed Taylor has ever seemed before a professional fight, even while being subjected to an unprecedented number of interviews with journalists and promotional shoots for tonight’s fight broadcaster, DAZN.
All week, she has presented an ice-cold, palpably confident picture, almost seeming to enjoy the most unenjoyable of weeks for any professional fighter — perhaps in the knowledge that Amanda Serrano is probably enjoying it less.
Taylor is typically a passive presence even during the face-offs at her own weigh-ins and comes alive only when the first bell sounds on a Saturday night. But this week has all felt different.
On Friday, she seemed intent on boring a hole in Serrano’s soul such was the intensity with which she stared at her opponent. When Serrano eventually looked away first, Taylor kept her eyes fixed on the challenger for an extra second before turning away with a very apparent sense of satisfaction, as though she had gotten the best of that particular exchange.
She “couldn’t care less” that, for the first time in over 20 years of competitive boxing, she’s the bookies’ underdog ahead of tonight’s scrap. That so many people are betting against her isn’t even a source of inspiration, she says. Taylor has never paid any heed to the opinions of people outside of her close circle in any case.
And while the pressure on the 35-year-old ahead of a generation-defining fight for the professional ranks is undeniably significant, Taylor would appear to be carrying it better this week than she did even in advance of both Delfine Persoon fights, for example.
“I don’t think anything can prepare for the pressure of going to the London Olympics to be quite honest,” she says. “During the whole competition… My whole childhood was based around this Olympic dream and I felt the whole weight of a nation was on my shoulders during that competition. So, this seems like a piece of cake in comparison to the pressure I was feeling during those London Olympics to be quite honest,” Taylor smiles.
It’s often been asked of Taylor how her major professional fights — and particularly her original bout with Delfine Persoon to unify the lightweight division — stack up to her London gold in terms of personal significance.
It has always struck this writer as a stupid line of questioning. What if — and bear with me, here — two things could be equally good?
The urge to compare is probably born of ignorance of her pro career, which has always felt slightly more distant to the majority of Irish fans (and many of the non-boxing journalists who have dipped in and out of it at the behest of their editors) because it has been broadcast in its entirety on subscription TV and often in the wee hours of the night, just as is the case today.
Taylor’s London 2012 campaign, and particularly the final against Russia’s Sofia Ochygava, was a national event, her gold-medal win watched by 1.1 million people in Ireland. To the more casual observer, it may be possible to gage the magnitude of one of her professional fights only by using her Olympic final as a yardstick.
On NBC’s Today earlier in the week, Taylor indicated that victory tonight would eclipse London altogether — something which she has never previously said.
Asked whether she really meant or whether she was simply acquiescing to tick the box of yet another pesky interview, Taylor laughs: “I don’t know, to be honest. Obviously, when I was coming up to the Olympics, it was my childhood dream. There wasn’t a day went by when I didn’t think of that Olympic medal. That was a very, very special moment and, regardless of anything else that happens in my career, I’ll always have that Olympic medal.
“I don’t know… This is obviously a mega fight, it’s a history-making fight. The whole world will be watching on Saturday night. It’s an amazing event. And this could possibly be the biggest night of my career on Saturday.
“It’s very, very hard to compare, isn’t it?”
It is. So let’s just admire the significance of both.
“Yeah! Exactly, exactly.
“I think when you’re in the middle of it, you’re just focused on your stuff. I think it’s probably years later when you retire from the sport and you look back and you think, ‘That was amazing.’”
Taylor does note, however, that “ever since fight was announced, you can feel the excitement and the buzz from people — and people are saying that this is the biggest fight obviously in women’s boxing history, but boxing as a whole.”
“You can definitely feel that there is something different about this fight,” she adds. “You can feel that this is a mega fight.
“Fight week is always very busy but this week has been busier than ever with all the interviews and all the media stuff that I’ve had to do. I guess it’s a reflection of the magnitude of this fight.
“This is absolutely huge.”
Perhaps what’s different about Taylor-Serrano, and partly what has made it one of the biggest boxing matches of the year, is that nobody can truly predict with any conviction who’s going to actually win it. Apart from the only two people who actually can win it.
“I’m expecting the decision on Saturday night,” Taylor says. “I don’t go into any final expecting to lose. I train to win and I am expecting to come out victorious.
“If anything didn’t go my way that would be a very, very disappointing night. I am prepared for a very tough challenge. She’s a great fighter and a great champion and these are the sort of challenges I absolutely love. These are the fights you dream of as a kid: champion versus champion, the best versus the best, and headlining in Madison Square Garden.”
