AS THE PUBLIC portion of Wednesday’s press conference wound down, Katie Taylor did something she had never done before in her 25-fight professional career: she took a shot at her opponent unprompted.
Amanda Serrano, responding to an English journalist’s query as to how she regrouped from her galling defeat to Taylor in their second fight last November, had just given an uplifting spiel about how “you only lose if you feel like you’ve lost”, and “my team told me I didn’t lose”.
A smirking Taylor gazed across the stage at her rival, leant into her microphone, and punctuated the Puerto Rican cheers.
“But you did lose the fight,” Taylor told her rival. “You did lose it.”
Cue a guttural sound from the sizeable Irish contingent at the back of MSG’s Theater. Serrano fell silent, staring into space and consciously tuning it out.
It was a Taylor round, but as has become typical of the two greatest female fighters on the planet, it was tough to split them over the 20 minutes.
Katie Taylor. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
Serrano has for years stirred the ‘divil’ in Taylor that we rarely see in public. The Bray woman has enjoyed goading her career-long nemesis since as far back as 2017. But Taylor has let it loose for this trilogy bout. She has rarely seemed more socially at ease in these contrived settings than when she routinely reminds Serrano that she’s 2-0 up in their rivalry despite The Real Deal’s gripes with the judges’ verdicts in their previous meetings.
“Opinions are opinions but facts are facts,” Taylor told her opponent earlier in Wednesday’s presser, “and you can’t get away from those facts.”
None of which is to suggest that Taylor has suddenly begun to embrace the self-promotional side of her job. Towards the end of the public presser, when MC Ariel Helwani received consecutive curt responses from a couple of the undercard boxers, he declared that “the time for talking is probably over”. Taylor nodded enthusiastically at front of stage.
Afterwards, this writer jokingly asked Taylor how she had so quickly become one of the nastiest trash talkers in boxing history.
“I have?” said Taylor, feigning astonishment with her hand on her chest.
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“I actually still hate these things, to be honest,” she laughed. “I’m not a natural trash talker.
“But I don’t think it’s trash talk,” Taylor clarified. “I’m just responding to what’s being said. Enough is enough of the nonsense, and all the complaining and whining about decisions in fights. Enough is enough of that.
“I don’t mind speaking my mind when I have to.”
And yet it increasingly feels inevitable that when the air clears between them beyond Friday, Taylor and Serrano will go the way of so many of their sport’s great rivals and allow their blood bond to blossom into something resembling friendship.
Interspliced between several feisty verbal exchanges throughout the evening were conciliatory moments and marks of respect.
When the time for talking was actually over, an intense face-off was eventually broken by Serrano, who burst into laughter and just about stopped short of embracing Taylor, gently patting her on the hip. Taylor, too, saw the funny side: there appeared a mutual acknowledgement that Friday’s headliners had stared each other down a couple of times too often since 2022 for any psychological edge to be established at this stage.
The champion, though, did subsequently hold three fingers aloft for the cameras, signalling her intention to make it a hat-trick against her fellow generational talent.
Taylor and Serrano following their staredown. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
This trilogy bout has been billed by Netflix as ‘One Final Fight’ between them and when it was put to Serrano that a fourth instalment might be in order should she slay her white whale, the Puerto Rican laughed: “Nah, I don’t think so. I’m kinda tired of Katie Taylor.
“We’ve had great moments together, we’ve had great fights together,” Serrano added. “But hey, two (wins) is better than one, right? She’ll have two and I’ll have one. She can live with that!”
Questions from the floor at these events are typically more miss than hit. There was something of a collective guffaw when one particular gentleman with broken English, sporting more New York Yankees gear than a New York Yankee, began his address with, “Katie. Amanda. Check this out…”
Little did we know that he was about to pull a rabbit from his baseball cap.
He put it to Taylor and Serrano that before Puerto Rican legend Felix ‘Tito’ Trinidad boxed American great Ronald ‘Winky’ Wright in Las Vegas just over 20 years ago, they made a bet wherein the loser would have to host the winner in his house for a few days and teach him the native language, culture and cuisine.
“Would you be willing to make the same promise,” the Yankee man asked Taylor and Serrano, “and would you be willing to shake hands on it on stage right now, on Netflix?”
His proposition was loudly approved from all corners of the room. Taylor and Serrano, too, were in stitches.
It was an inspired gear-change, instantly reducing a pair of squabbling superheroes to normal, awkward human beings.
“Listen, we could have dinner together and learn about each other’s [cultures],” Serrano laughed. “I’ve gotten to know a lot about Katie. She has an amazing family and an amazing team. Unless she wants to come learn some Spanish and eat some good food? We have good food in Puerto Rico!”
“I’d love to go to Puerto Rico,” Taylor beamed. “Do you wanna do that shake?” she added, her hand outstretched in Serrano’s direction, albeit from a safe distance.
“But Ireland is so far!” Serrano responded. “How far is Ireland?”
“Well, about a seven-hour flight,” Taylor said.
“Ah, no,” Serrano countered. “Mine is about three hours — a three-and-a-half-hour flight. Mine is a lot closer.”
“Thank you, ladies,” said the unlikely star of the night, who offloaded the mic to a Netflix staffer and immediately exited the premises, his mission evidently complete.
Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
Taylor and Serrano enjoyed moments of levity amid the verbal barbs. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
Eight months earlier at the equivalent press conference in Dallas, Jake Paul had gone around the houses to ask each undercard boxer who they were backing to win his inevitably sham fight with Mike Tyson. He dared his drastically less well-off detractors to bet their purses that Tyson would win, shaking their hands when they uncomfortably acquiesced.
In fairness to Paul, while it does little to disprove that he’s the antichrist, he did not follow through on those bets, instead acknowledging the crudeness of his antics after he shadow-boxed his way to a points victory over a 58-year-old friend with whom he had holidayed the previous summer.
Still, the comparative authenticity of Wednesday night felt antidotal, the lingering poison from Paul’s Cowboys Stadium clown-show washed out of the system at last.
And credit where it’s due: Paul himself contributed to that cleanse by contributing virtually nothing on the night.
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The 28-year-old and his MVP Promotions outfit will again run the show on Friday night in conjunction with Netflix, but he was a mostly passive observer as Taylor and Serrano held the floor on Pennsylvania Plaza.
When the YouTuber-turned-boxer did speak briefly with media afterwards, he refused to entertain any questions about his own boxing career, asking reporters to instead inquire only about Serrano, Taylor, or the boxers on their all-female undercard, several of whom Paul now promotes and will earn career-biggest paydays on Friday.
Still, MVP boxer Serrano will enjoy some of the A-side perks when she faces Taylor for a third time: the bout will this time be contested at a 136-pound limit (all of Taylor’s 140lb titles will remain in play), which suits the slightly smaller Puerto Rican.
But that’s no skin off Taylor’s nose, either — or at least it shouldn’t come to that; she rarely weighs much more than 140 pounds even during her downtime, and she has campaigned for most of her career at 135.
Taylor will be announced first by the MC come fight night, too, which is typically the role of the challenger rather than the champion.
“I don’t really care about any of that stuff,” she said from stage on Wednesday. “My mindset does not change. This stuff is just nonsense, really.”
In a subsequent media scrum, she would describe Serrano’s demand to walk out second as “embarrassing”, reiterating that the Puerto Rican is “not the champion”.
But don’t rule out some grub in Brooklyn or San Juan just yet.
“I think even off camera right now, when nobody is around, we have great conversations as well,” Taylor said of Serrano. “Obviously, when the press conference is going on, things are said. Those are the things that are highlighted.
“We definitely have a lot of mutual respect towards each other and I think she’s a fantastic person.”
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The end of a bitter rivalry in New York will surely mark the beginning of a beautiful friendship
AS THE PUBLIC portion of Wednesday’s press conference wound down, Katie Taylor did something she had never done before in her 25-fight professional career: she took a shot at her opponent unprompted.
Amanda Serrano, responding to an English journalist’s query as to how she regrouped from her galling defeat to Taylor in their second fight last November, had just given an uplifting spiel about how “you only lose if you feel like you’ve lost”, and “my team told me I didn’t lose”.
A smirking Taylor gazed across the stage at her rival, leant into her microphone, and punctuated the Puerto Rican cheers.
“But you did lose the fight,” Taylor told her rival. “You did lose it.”
Cue a guttural sound from the sizeable Irish contingent at the back of MSG’s Theater. Serrano fell silent, staring into space and consciously tuning it out.
It was a Taylor round, but as has become typical of the two greatest female fighters on the planet, it was tough to split them over the 20 minutes.
Serrano has for years stirred the ‘divil’ in Taylor that we rarely see in public. The Bray woman has enjoyed goading her career-long nemesis since as far back as 2017. But Taylor has let it loose for this trilogy bout. She has rarely seemed more socially at ease in these contrived settings than when she routinely reminds Serrano that she’s 2-0 up in their rivalry despite The Real Deal’s gripes with the judges’ verdicts in their previous meetings.
“Opinions are opinions but facts are facts,” Taylor told her opponent earlier in Wednesday’s presser, “and you can’t get away from those facts.”
None of which is to suggest that Taylor has suddenly begun to embrace the self-promotional side of her job. Towards the end of the public presser, when MC Ariel Helwani received consecutive curt responses from a couple of the undercard boxers, he declared that “the time for talking is probably over”. Taylor nodded enthusiastically at front of stage.
Afterwards, this writer jokingly asked Taylor how she had so quickly become one of the nastiest trash talkers in boxing history.
“I have?” said Taylor, feigning astonishment with her hand on her chest.
“I actually still hate these things, to be honest,” she laughed. “I’m not a natural trash talker.
“But I don’t think it’s trash talk,” Taylor clarified. “I’m just responding to what’s being said. Enough is enough of the nonsense, and all the complaining and whining about decisions in fights. Enough is enough of that.
“I don’t mind speaking my mind when I have to.”
And yet it increasingly feels inevitable that when the air clears between them beyond Friday, Taylor and Serrano will go the way of so many of their sport’s great rivals and allow their blood bond to blossom into something resembling friendship.
Interspliced between several feisty verbal exchanges throughout the evening were conciliatory moments and marks of respect.
When the time for talking was actually over, an intense face-off was eventually broken by Serrano, who burst into laughter and just about stopped short of embracing Taylor, gently patting her on the hip. Taylor, too, saw the funny side: there appeared a mutual acknowledgement that Friday’s headliners had stared each other down a couple of times too often since 2022 for any psychological edge to be established at this stage.
The champion, though, did subsequently hold three fingers aloft for the cameras, signalling her intention to make it a hat-trick against her fellow generational talent.
This trilogy bout has been billed by Netflix as ‘One Final Fight’ between them and when it was put to Serrano that a fourth instalment might be in order should she slay her white whale, the Puerto Rican laughed: “Nah, I don’t think so. I’m kinda tired of Katie Taylor.
“We’ve had great moments together, we’ve had great fights together,” Serrano added. “But hey, two (wins) is better than one, right? She’ll have two and I’ll have one. She can live with that!”
Questions from the floor at these events are typically more miss than hit. There was something of a collective guffaw when one particular gentleman with broken English, sporting more New York Yankees gear than a New York Yankee, began his address with, “Katie. Amanda. Check this out…”
Little did we know that he was about to pull a rabbit from his baseball cap.
He put it to Taylor and Serrano that before Puerto Rican legend Felix ‘Tito’ Trinidad boxed American great Ronald ‘Winky’ Wright in Las Vegas just over 20 years ago, they made a bet wherein the loser would have to host the winner in his house for a few days and teach him the native language, culture and cuisine.
“Would you be willing to make the same promise,” the Yankee man asked Taylor and Serrano, “and would you be willing to shake hands on it on stage right now, on Netflix?”
His proposition was loudly approved from all corners of the room. Taylor and Serrano, too, were in stitches.
It was an inspired gear-change, instantly reducing a pair of squabbling superheroes to normal, awkward human beings.
“Listen, we could have dinner together and learn about each other’s [cultures],” Serrano laughed. “I’ve gotten to know a lot about Katie. She has an amazing family and an amazing team. Unless she wants to come learn some Spanish and eat some good food? We have good food in Puerto Rico!”
“I’d love to go to Puerto Rico,” Taylor beamed. “Do you wanna do that shake?” she added, her hand outstretched in Serrano’s direction, albeit from a safe distance.
“But Ireland is so far!” Serrano responded. “How far is Ireland?”
“Well, about a seven-hour flight,” Taylor said.
“Ah, no,” Serrano countered. “Mine is about three hours — a three-and-a-half-hour flight. Mine is a lot closer.”
“Thank you, ladies,” said the unlikely star of the night, who offloaded the mic to a Netflix staffer and immediately exited the premises, his mission evidently complete.
Eight months earlier at the equivalent press conference in Dallas, Jake Paul had gone around the houses to ask each undercard boxer who they were backing to win his inevitably sham fight with Mike Tyson. He dared his drastically less well-off detractors to bet their purses that Tyson would win, shaking their hands when they uncomfortably acquiesced.
In fairness to Paul, while it does little to disprove that he’s the antichrist, he did not follow through on those bets, instead acknowledging the crudeness of his antics after he shadow-boxed his way to a points victory over a 58-year-old friend with whom he had holidayed the previous summer.
Still, the comparative authenticity of Wednesday night felt antidotal, the lingering poison from Paul’s Cowboys Stadium clown-show washed out of the system at last.
And credit where it’s due: Paul himself contributed to that cleanse by contributing virtually nothing on the night.
The 28-year-old and his MVP Promotions outfit will again run the show on Friday night in conjunction with Netflix, but he was a mostly passive observer as Taylor and Serrano held the floor on Pennsylvania Plaza.
When the YouTuber-turned-boxer did speak briefly with media afterwards, he refused to entertain any questions about his own boxing career, asking reporters to instead inquire only about Serrano, Taylor, or the boxers on their all-female undercard, several of whom Paul now promotes and will earn career-biggest paydays on Friday.
Still, MVP boxer Serrano will enjoy some of the A-side perks when she faces Taylor for a third time: the bout will this time be contested at a 136-pound limit (all of Taylor’s 140lb titles will remain in play), which suits the slightly smaller Puerto Rican.
But that’s no skin off Taylor’s nose, either — or at least it shouldn’t come to that; she rarely weighs much more than 140 pounds even during her downtime, and she has campaigned for most of her career at 135.
Taylor will be announced first by the MC come fight night, too, which is typically the role of the challenger rather than the champion.
“I don’t really care about any of that stuff,” she said from stage on Wednesday. “My mindset does not change. This stuff is just nonsense, really.”
In a subsequent media scrum, she would describe Serrano’s demand to walk out second as “embarrassing”, reiterating that the Puerto Rican is “not the champion”.
But don’t rule out some grub in Brooklyn or San Juan just yet.
“I think even off camera right now, when nobody is around, we have great conversations as well,” Taylor said of Serrano. “Obviously, when the press conference is going on, things are said. Those are the things that are highlighted.
“We definitely have a lot of mutual respect towards each other and I think she’s a fantastic person.”
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Boxing inseparable taylor v serrano 3