NEW YORK – Katie Taylor showed up Friday afternoon and then – more than 24 hours before she was in the boxing ring at Madison Square Garden against Amanda Serrano – that the gravity of everything they’ d tried try to pull out hit her.
She’s seen big weights before. But inside the Hulu Theater it was like, are you kidding me? The crowd was very fierce. Colorful. Massive volume, especially for weighing. Puerto Rican fans and Ireland fans waved their flags, chanted and turned a mundane part of a boxing week into its own show.
For months, they considered Taylor-Serrano the biggest fight in women’s boxing history. Now they will have to deliver.
“It’s something like a balanced Anthony Joshua or a Canelo [Alvarez] “consider,” Taylor said. “I’ve never been through anything like that in my entire professional career, and just sold out Madison Square Garden here tonight, the atmosphere is just amazing.
“Tonight is very, very, very special, and I don’t know what else to say.”
At the time the still bloody Taylor sat in a chair – standing beside her were her promoter, Eddie Hearn, and her coach, Ross Enamait, after defend her undisputed lightweight title in a decisive victory on Amanda Serrano – she got the answer.
Taylor-Serrano did more than create a memorable fight on a night when women’s boxing received rare attention. It has created boxing excellence, and it shows the ability of a sport that is developing both potential stars and needs some time to catch up.
If everything goes well, it will attract attention. If it goes perfectly – and Saturday night is around the corner – it could transform and elevate the entire sport.
“Madison Square Garden, you think of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier,” Taylor said. “People will absolutely talk about me and Amanda Serrano for years and years to come.
“This was a fight that made history, and it certainly lived up to that expectation.”
The entire ad – on the posters, as part of the title tags and even the hashtags they’ve been trying to push over the past few weeks – is focused on one thing: history. The first women ever headlined The Garden’s great room. Taylor and Serrano were asked what to do next for an impossible Saturday night.
They are asked to live up to the extraordinary reality that is promoting any sport, but especially boxing. This can easily be a disappointment. These events can be swallowed up by the gravity of the impulse and the magnitude of the moment.
Taylor-Serrano has exceeded what one might expect, what the promoters have charged. As Taylor and Serrano stood in the middle of the ring at the last minute, decibels from the crowd increasing with each punch they had thrown, everything they had hoped for came true.
Serrano suffered a facial bruise; Taylor has a bloody nose and a cut above her right eye. The crowd provided a tense atmosphere. All the necessary ingredients are already in place to create a big moment in The Garden.
If you want a souvenir, Taylor and Serrano delivered. If you want a technical duel between two different types of gladiators trying to plan the game to attack each other? You also get that.
The only things that don’t happen are knockdowns or knockouts, but some of the best matches don’t end like that. Why? Because the fight was even. Two boxers of equal stature, making life difficult for the other.
“Tonight is the moment when we stop talking about women’s and men’s boxing,” Hearn said. “It’s just boxing. Because it’s one of the best fights I’ve ever witnessed live.”
The energy was clear from the start. Two hours before Taylor and Serrano left their dressing rooms, cheers broke out whenever Taylor or Serrano’s names were mentioned. At 8:20 p.m., when the video shows each boxer entering The Garden, it’s like they’re entering the arena.
As the moment drew near, the crowd became more frenzied; “Ole, Ole, Ole” is repeatedly chanted across Liam Smith-Jessie Vargas cards in front of an area where nearly every seat was filled.
During their walks in the ring, both fighters seem to realize the gravity of the moment, to appreciate more of what they’ve been through.
Taylor seemed to pause at the top of the ring before stepping into it, briefly looking like a small smile had softened her battle-night serious demeanor. She later said that the evening eclipsed the night she won the 2012 Olympic gold medal in London.
Serrano slammed her gloves together when she was introduced, this after she raised her fists in front of the crowd in acknowledgment before entering the ring.
“It was just a crazy feeling,” Serrano said. “You have two women, after the main event is MSG sold out, who would have thought that? You have two great champions out there, giving their all, and the crowd is really great. .
“My last two events, I was a co-star with Jake Paul, and I was able to experience that. But this time, it was me, and I was asked to enjoy every minute of it, and that’s it. is what I did. I just put it all in.”
As the fight began, Serrano couldn’t hear anything in particular. The noise was so loud — and almost constant — that she couldn’t hear from her corner, trainer Jordan Maldonado, and her sister, former professional boxer Cindy Serrano.
That’s what they want. An environment like this. A night like this. An opportunity to explicitly develop a sport they are very interested in. It’s a lofty goal beyond the reality of winning or losing, of legacies and what Taylor calls “career defining moments”. It’s risky to show that. A lot of things can go wrong. But Taylor and Serrano have done something remarkable.
They brought women’s boxing to the top of the table with fists. They pulled it out.
