The trilogy ends. And there were hints, too, in the sweet early hours of Saturday morning that this might be all she wrote for Katie Taylor as well. After a raucous night on the fringes of Hell’s Kitchen, Taylor closed the books on her riveting series of fights against Amanda Serrano and finished with an unblemished record. Just as she had promised during the week of promotion in New York, she got it done.
These athletes will age and finally retire, and the record books will record that the Irish fighter ended with a perfect three wins from three against the Puerto Rican. That bare statistic reveals nothing of the closeness or true controversies or the mutual respect contained within these encounters. It was a lofty sports rivalry.
But in the end, Taylor managed to erase the question marks and silence the grumbles after their previous two battles to finish with a supremely controlled performance. She owned the night.
Taylor has pioneered what has been a marvel of a fighting life by executing it precisely on her own terms. So it went in New York. Madison Square Garden was something to behold. That area around Eighth and the lower 30s is a 24-hour confluence of extreme tourism and city poverty and grit. All of human life was outside the arena on Friday night. Inside, a wildly partisan and noisy sell-out crowd filled with Puerto Rican and Irish fans, both in a mood to celebrate. The previous encounters had led them to expect something primal.
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“The atmosphere was absolutely electric tonight,” Taylor said when she sat down late into the night, Madison Square Garden low-lit now and empty except for the staff who were locking up.
“And to be headlining an all-female card was an absolute privilege. These are the sort of opportunities that people didn’t even think possible a few years ago. The two fights previous ended up complete wars and I came out the ring battered and bruised, and I was thinking, why am I just standing there fighting her? I knew I was capable of moving my legs and just outboxing her. And I was just happy that I was able to execute the game plan Ross [Enamait] was telling me to do all along. I used the ring a lot better tonight. My feet were a lot better tonight. I felt it was my kind of fight, and my kind of pace as well.”
Taylor looked at peace as she spoke. In Texas last winter, her face was swollen and cut after her war with Serrano. This time, a single bruise to her cheekbone where Serrano’s head actually glanced against hers. She finished the fight fresher, gliding on the edges of the danger zone and comprehensively outscoring the Puerto Rican, who was exhausted from trying to make her punches land against the elusive Irish woman. Listening to her, it was hard to predict if she will fight again.
“I don’t know,” she said of the future. “I am just going to enjoy this victory right now and sit back and reflect. I am very, very happy with tonight’s performance and just the amount of work I am doing over the past few months, myself and Ross, it was a gruelling few months of preparation and I’m so glad I was able to showcase what I could do tonight.”
Make no mistake, the crowd in the Garden came in the belief that the fight would break into a gladiatorial brawl as soon as the first bell sounded and would move into uncharted country from there. As it turned out, the flashpoints of furious engagements were periodic and brief but with each one, the decibel level in the arena turned deafening. It’s hard to imagine the noise levels had the athletes just forgotten their instructions and submitted to the crowd instincts and wish for a schoolyard brawl.
In the second round, a familiar pattern began to establish itself: Serrano hunting, Taylor circling the ring, avoiding trouble and seeking to pick off clean punches. The dam threatened to break with 45 seconds remaining in the third, when Taylor, leading with the ultra-accurate left jab, landed three quick punches on the Puerto Rican. Serrano countered with a flurry of her own but Taylor, at 39, has lost little of her ability to become a ghost in the ring: she was gone.
On it went, Serrano in the middle of the canvas, searching out Taylor, who used that wonderful footwork and pure boxing supremacy to guide her through the 10 rounds of two minutes. Judge Mark Lyson scored the fight a draw but the other two, Steve Weisfeld and Nicolas Esnault, had it emphatically in Taylor’s favour, 97-93, and, in or around midnight, Taylor was still the undisputed super featherweight champion of the world.
The Irish crowd was delighted and it was impossible to hear what Taylor said in the ring afterwards. But she was effusive in her praise of Serrano, and of her faith, and struck an uncertain note when asked about what the future holds now.
“Maybe Croke Park?” she laughed when asked if she could promise her Irish supporters at least one more bout.
“That would be unbelievable. I said it in the ring earlier – these people are spending their hard-earned money to come over and support me. It means the world. And I can’t believe this is my life – I’m heading a show in Madison Square Garden, an all-female card. Looking back at the whole journey – what an amazing ride. These are the nights I dreamed of a kid, and I am just so happy and so grateful. What an amazing champion. We created history together three times. My name will always be embedded with hers and I am very happy about that. It’s amazing to have a rival like that in the sport.”
As an event, the Netflix-streamed all-women’s card was a glittering success, drawing a close to sell-out crowd and giving the women’s fight game an unprecedented stage. Afterwards, Taylor’s promoter, Matchroom chief Eddie Hearn, beaming and wearing an Emerald green bucket cap, made the reasonable point that Taylor has been the alchemist for all of this.
“I’m not speaking on Katie’s behalf, but I know she’s always wanted female boxing to sit alongside men’s boxing. It’s not two codes. And I’ve always said that Katie Taylor is not just one of the greatest female fighters of all time but one of the greatest fighters of all time. And that was the barrier that she broke.
“So, we don’t compare the female and the male code. It’s just boxing. But. What they did tonight was give so many opportunities to so many great female fighters and big pay-days and she won’t say it: it is down to her.”
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Whether the sport can produce a rivalry as compelling and high-quality as Taylor and Serrano remains to be seen. Both have earned six-figure pay-days from their rivalry and thrust the women’s fight game into a spotlight that would have seemed fanciful when Taylor set out on the professional circuit nine years ago. The Irish crowd stayed to give her a deafening ovation before heading back out to the delights of the island.
“I don’t think anybody could deny I won tonight’s fight, so it is very satisfying,” Taylor said finally. “There was a controversy in those decisions, so I feel very, very satisfied right now that it was lights-out.”
