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. 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 statethat the Irish fighter ended with a perfect three wins from three against the Puerto Rican.
That bare statistic reveals nothing of the closeness or fierceness or true controversies of their 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.
“I wouldn’t say I have anything left to prove,” Taylor said later. The big arena was empty save the cleaning staff. “I thought I showed a very smart performance, a clever performance,” she said. The Irish woman looked sated and spoke of the Serrano fights with a sense of completeness.
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“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 I was able to execute the game plan Ross 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 pace as well.”
It wasn’t what the wildly energetic and evenly split crowd fully expected. But then Taylor’s career has never run on predictable lines. The peculiar thing about Madison Square Garden is that when it’s converted into a boxing arena, it shrinks, wonderfully, and becomes claustrophobic and closed in, as if the ring is about to cough up a secret. Stripped of its shiny basketball court or ice rink, the roof seems to collapse in and the old place is as tight as a tin of shoe polish.
When the hour came, so did the Irish. It’s been a while since the rebel ballads came bellowing out of the Irish haunts along 8th Avenue but for an hour or so, they filled the summer air. A huge Puerto Rican contingent showed up early to await Serrano’s arrival. The Irish, old hands at this lark, left it late but by the time the penultimate fight, between Alycia Baumgardner and Jennfier Miranda was entering its closing rounds, the timeless chorus of Ole Ole Ole, which has carried through several generations of this stage, filled Madison Square Garden. It may not be Sinatra but it carries its own goosebump power.
And anyhow, Ol’ Blue Eyes got a look in. He was there, framed in a black and white photograph wielding the camera with which he moonlighted as a professional photographer to see Ali and Frazier fight in one of the most storied nights in this place. The framed photograph was directly above Katie Taylor as she sat in her dressingroom waiting to come in.
No matter how many times the country watches Taylor in the minutes before she enters the ring – and a question mark remains over how many times that privilege will arise in the future – her solemnity in these moments is never less than disconcerting. She’s surrounded by family, her trainer Ross Enamait is close at hand but she never seems less than utterly alone. So it went when she made her walk into the arena to the soundtrack of Even Though I Walk sung by Hannah McClure.
This was a global livestream event and slickly produced but something about Taylor’s presence means that she retains a distance from the noisy sequin-y theatrics of boxing even when she is right in the heart of it. And this was a riveting clash of cultures and nationality. Serrano’s entrance, to the sound of Puerto Rico by Frankie Cutlass, had a touch of the carnivale about it. She was trailed by promoters Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian. Despite advance billings, Taylor was given the honour of entering the arena last, as the defending champion.
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.
Instead, Taylor turned in a measured, disciplined boxing performance. In the first round, both women bobbed and feinted and did not lay a glove on one another. Given the ferocity of their history, it was disconcerting for the wildly partisan and expectant audience. But it was not unexpected. These are seasoned professionals but it was as though when confronted with one another again, the demons and the physical pain of those previous fights were dancing through their minds. So, neither fighter was prepared to jump first.
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, with 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.
So 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 Ensault had it emphatically in Taylor’s favour, 97-93 and 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.
“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 nine years ago. The Irish crowd stayed to give her a deafening ovation before heading back out to the delights of the island. It’s hard to imagine that Taylor could choose a better exit, one of the last fighters to leave the famous New York theatre on a hot July win.
“I don’t think anybody could deny I won tonight’s fight so it is very satisfying. There was a controversy in those [earlier] decisions, so I feel very, very satisfied right now that it was lights out.”
