THEY WERE THE words that Irish sports fans around the world, and thousands of them inside Madison Square Garden, were begging to hear.
And halfway through the bout, they felt like an impossibility.
“And still!”
Katie Taylor, who was seriously hurt and looked all but done for in a vicious fifth round with the brilliant Amanda Serrano, produced a recovery for the ages in a fight for all time to defend her lightweight throne on a split decision.
After 10 rounds of boxing that will forever rank up there with some of the best this storied venue has ever seen, the three judges scored the contest 97-93 and 96-93 for the Irish icon, with another seeing it 96-94 for the Puerto Rican.
By the end of their most remarkable war, even those meant to be in the press seats had left them: an official audience of 19,000+ was on its feet, not even applauding but screaming at the roof after what it had just witnessed.
Taylor’s sheer will and Serrano’s raw ferocity combined to produce something that will remain emblazoned on the memory of anyone who paid to watch it. Even the fighters’ trainers, Ross Enamait and Jordan Maldonado, between whom there is no love lost, beamed and high-fived as they sprinted into the ring to celebrate their charges amid the mayhem of the final bell.
Equally, the Irish and Puerto Rican fans blended to create one of the most electrifying fight atmospheres that most at ringside had ever witnessed.
The talk afterwards was of a rematch in Ireland. Time will tell if that comes to fruition. But this was a fight which earned its status as ‘a real moment in time’, as billed.
Taylor was already a living legend but in surviving the fifth round and fighting back as she did tonight against an opponent as formidable as Serrano, she added significantly to her greatness.
As she was hoisted aloft in the ring after the verdict, fist-pumping and roaring at the thousands of Irish in the crowd, one suspected that even the humble Bray woman would have admitted as much.
The overall event, headlining at a packed Madison Square Garden just six years after women’s professional boxing was practically an underground sport, was one of the greatest achievements of her career before a punch was thrown. This victory, achieved against both the bookies’ odds for the first time and against all likelihood in the circumstances, might have been the best of her 20-plus years in boxing.
Some two hours before the headline bout, footage beamed around the half-full room of the champion and challenger arriving in the building. The respective responses of their fans called into question the idea that this was, indeed, ‘Taylor’s house’ as promoter Eddie Hearn had described it midweek. The Irish response to Taylor was massive, sure, but the Puerto Rican reception for Serrano was ear-splitting. As one Irish scribe next to me put it, ‘The Paddies must still be in the pub.’
He may have been right.
The round breaks in the undercard bouts were mostly punctuated by quintessential Irish session songs. As if anxious for the main event, both sets of supporters seemed to unite with a sizeable Liverpudlian contingent in roaring Liam Smith to a stoppage finish of the hearty but too-far-gone Jesse Vargas of Las Vegas in the chief support bout.
With that, the Irish and Puerto Ricans entered what could be only described as a feral state for several minutes as they awaited to see their two heroes emerge for real. Flags were swung around heads, arms flailed, and minds were seemingly lost in the majesty of the occasion. And that was before ‘Sweet Caroline,’ which quickly gave way to the night’s loudest ‘Olé Olé’ to that point.
A living legend. pic.twitter.com/723hVMeEn3
— Gavan Casey (@GavanCasey) May 1, 2022
By the time Taylor and Serrano reappeared on the jumbotron from the dressing rooms at at 10-past-10, the tables had turned. The noise, ‘The Fields’, Cathy Maguire’s rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann were stirring.
The ringwalks were even better. Serrano’s was absolutely raucous. Taylor, meanwhile, conspicuously soaked in the occasion, just as she did at Friday’s weigh-in. The crowd would have lifted her into the ring if it could have reached.
As they received their final instructions from referee Michael Griffin — he had to screech them on account of the noise — Serrano did her best to posture one last time in an intimidating manner. Taylor simply smiled at her.
The Irish icon landed the first shot in anger, a tidy straight right to the body. Serrano responded in kind with a left to the same section. Taylor, though, looked immediately sharper than her last two sluggish outings, clipping Serrano with a couple of combinations upstairs and working well off her backfoot to take a fast-paced opener.
The second began with a little bit of inside fighting from which neither competitor really came out the better. They then traded shots upstairs, with both sets of supporters believing their woman had edged the exchange.
A tighter second was probably shaded by Serrano, who appeared to land a couple of cleaner shots as she continued to move Taylor backwards. The Bray woman, though, did find the mark with a couple of sharp straight rights down the pipe which made it close.
Taylor made Serrano look clumsy for most of the third, timing her with swifter single strikes off either hand. With seconds remaining, however, she became one with the atmosphere and seemed to briefly lose the plot, standing toe to toe with the far bigger puncher and swallowing a couple of damaging shots from Puerto Rican southpaw. It was so loud during this particular exchange that Taylor appeared to gesture towards the bell to inform Serrano that the round had indeed ended before they stepped to it again.
Serrano brought some of that momentum with her into the fourth, although Taylor partly arrested it with a beautifully timed counter right hand over the top.
We already had a barnburner on our hands and one couldn’t help but wonder if it had turned too violent too soon for Taylor’s sake; she has, on occasion, tired down the stretch of abrasive battles, and Serrano carries with her in her left hand a kind of soul-sucking pop.
Naturally, given Taylor’s long since accepted penchant for a “tear-up”, as she calls it, those concerns turned to Irish panic in Round 5.
In short, all hell broke loose. Taylor got too brave and Serrano went on a rampage, battering the Bray woman from pillar to post for what felt like an eternity.
Taylor, unable to stifle the bombing Brooklynite, somehow managed to find it within herself to at least swing back while taking an almighty pummeling, her face bloodied but vacant.
These were two minutes of utter insanity, the Puerto Rican fans smelling a finish and the Irish support howling at Taylor to simply survive until the end of the round. That the disheveled champion didn’t touch the canvas was miraculous, a testament not only to her will but to her conditioning by trainer Ross Enamait, who has taken his share of flak for her recently off-colour performances.
This writer still scored it a 10-8 round for Serrano and, as we would later learn, one judge agreed.
What Taylor was able to produce in the sixth was equally unbelievable. She actually won several exchanges but still probably lost the round as Serrano piled forward in search of a finish.
This was now the New Yorker’s fight to lose, and it was going to take something other-worldly for Taylor to protect her undefeated record and keep hold of her lightweight crown.
Maybe we shouldn’t consider it unbelievable when it’s Katie Taylor. But she did it.
The champion reefed Serrano with two strong rights to start the seventh and nicked the round, narrowing the deficit with three to go.
Remarkably, she managed to fight the eighth as sharply as if it was the first, creating angles and boxing beautifully to reduce the gap further.
She was conspicuously exhausted in the ninth but probably took that one, too, despite Serrano landing a thumping left-hook counter upstairs on the bell.
The tenth and final verse, with the fight seemingly hanging in the balance, was one that will be spoken about until the end of days.
Taylor, hauling something extraordinary out of her tired body, launched an all-out assault. Suddenly, it was the Irish fans who sensed a vulnerability in the Puerto Rican. Taylor dominated the majority of the round, dishing out abuse until Serrano exploded into life in the dying seconds with a handful of huge punches that equally rocked Taylor, whose knees briefly dipped.
The pair swung for each other with literal vengeance until the final bell. Everybody in the arena, including the entire press section, rose to their feet in unison. It felt involuntary. There were hands on heads, mouths agape, and continuous screaming as the dust finally settled on the ring — and again, that was just in the press section.
Bedlam followed those two words: ‘And still.’ It will continue onto Pennsylvsania Plaza and beyond tonight.
