Ahead of the third installment of the achingly close and violent rivalry between boxing greats Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano, the BoxingScene staff assembled to make their predictions.
Lucas Ketelle: Katie Taylor is an all-time great, like Naoya Inoue, Oleksandr Usyk, Terence Crawford and other great fighters of this modern era. The truly great ones, even when you think they are done, find a way to win. If Serrano were to win a bout in the series, I think it would have been the last one. I am expecting Taylor to separate a bit and win in a fashion that closes the greatest trilogy in women’s boxing. Why? That is what legends tend to do.
Owen Lewis: I’ll be honest: Given how thin the margin between victory and defeat proved in the first two fights, you might as well flip a coin rather than read my take. Three factors come to mind here. One, Taylor has gotten the nod on the scorecards in the first two fights. The action was dead-even, and plenty thought Serrano deserved at least one win – but five of the six scorecards submitted by official judges favored Taylor. If the third fight resembles the first two, there’s no reason to think Taylor won’t take home another narrow decision; the judges clearly prefer her work to Serrano’s.
The second factor is that Serrano is surely coming into this fight thinking she needs a knockout, or at least a couple knockdowns. She (understandably) feels she won both her fights with Taylor. If those performances weren’t enough to win, well, she may have to take it into her own hands. This rivalry resembles the spectacular Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez series more than any other pairing of active fighters, and maybe it will end the same way – with the fighter who fell inches short of the defining win of their career earlier in the rivalry achieving catharsis via brutal KO.
Factor No. 3 – unfortunately – is wear and tear. Serrano is 36. Taylor is 39. Both have taken significant damage, via each other’s fists and those of many other opponents. Serrano may be younger, but will her frequent jumps through the weight divisions and the accompanying physical strain wear her down or prove an equalizer? These two might fight on even terms once again, but it probably won’t be at the level of their first fight.
My prediction: Taylor by decision. I think she’s too good to be knocked out, which means she’ll last the distance and, in my estimation, win a third narrow points victory. I’m fully prepared to be wrong.
Kieran Mulvaney: I thought Serrano won the first fight and am convinced she should have gotten the nod in the rematch. If she couldn't get the decision in Texas in a fight I thought she clearly won, I don't know how she’ll be able to convince the judges in New York City. The other factor is that, against Taylor, her offense has twice started strongly, has twice threatened to put Taylor down or out, and then has become a bit one-note, allowing Taylor to come back down the stretch. Unless she is able to create greater variance and change things up, I suspect we'll see a similar pattern again. I don't know whether I will again feel Serrano deserves the nod, but I am picking Taylor to walk away with a victory and the closest 3-0 record against an opponent we'll see for some time.
Jason Langendorf: If the shoe were on the other foot, and Serrano were the 2-0 fighter in the rivalry, I would have little faith in Taylor flipping the script in fight No. 3. But in this case, Serrano has an equalizer: her power. Taylor has proven she can take a punch – many of them, in fact – and her technical skill seems to hold sway with the judges. Yet one well-placed right-hand hammer from Serrano at least threatens to do the job against the nearly 40-year-old Taylor. I can’t see Serrano getting the nod if it again goes 10 – but maybe she can finally find the button that ends it early.
Tris Dixon: The decisions in both fights for me have been paper-thin. They have both been free-swinging, thrilling fights, and I don’t expect this one to be any different – I just wonder and have concern over how many times Taylor can go to the well. Will this be the time when things finally come apart? I don’t think so, but I could see her being rocked, hurt and losing this time. But her incredible work for boxing – amateur and pro – has been done.
Matt Christie: Like Tris, I have worries about Taylor’s long and gruelling career, which, surely, will again be stretched to breaking point by Serrano. Yet Serrano hasn’t exactly lived a sheltered life in boxing terms, and one wonders if this is the fight where one of them capitulates under the kind of pressure they could previously withstand. If that is the scenario, then Taylor, who was badly hurt in both of their previous battles, seems the likeliest to crumble.
However, given what we have seen from both of these great warriors in the past, it is perhaps cynical – and certainly cruel – to predict such an unfitting finale to their rivalry. Perhaps the 20 rounds they’ve shared is therefore the best evidence on which to focus and, thus, a further 10 rounds of back-and-forth violence is the most logical outcome. Should another close distance fight occur, Serrano is surely due to see her arm raised at its conclusion.
Jake Donovan: The one wild card I really haven’t seen addressed is that this is the only fight of the trilogy in which Serrano has been afforded more time to further acclimate to the higher weight. For each of the previous two fights, she was only one fight removed from featherweight – eight months from her August. 2021 title defense to her April 2022 challenge of Taylor at 135, and nine months from weighing just under 126lbs for her eventually canceled clash with Nina Meinke to last November’s epic rematch. She is now three fights deep at the higher weight without having moved back down to featherweight in between, and she actually slightly outweighed Taylor during Thursday’s official weigh-in.
I don’t doubt that Taylor was a consummate pro in cutting down the catchweight in place for this fight. It’s also the lightest she has been in more than two years, and even a miniscule dropoff at 39 could prove to be a difference in this otherwise dead-even matchup. Or … maybe I’m just wasting keystrokes and they look exactly the same in Part III as they did in I and II, as suggested by the general consensus. Either way, shading Serrano to finally get the elusive victory (via decision) she realistically should have been awarded eight months ago (and arguably the first fight as well).
Lance Pugmire: Amanda Serrano’s pent-up frustration with losing two narrow decisions will push her to a decisive victory in this homecoming bout as she leaves nothing to chance, winning the narrow rounds and outworking the fellow legendary Taylor. Serrano’s story is rooted in relentlessness, as she toiled for years in the blood sport for horrific wages before finally attracting the attention and purses she deserves. The final step to this tale is to rally from these Taylor setbacks and stand as queen of the game.
