Of all the major fights across two nights of boxing in New York City’s assorted boroughs this past weekend, so many of them promising on paper, there was only one that was a sure thing: Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano III. It couldn’t miss.

In the end, of the seven women’s 8- or 10-rounders on Friday and four men’s 10- or 12-rounders on Saturday — 11 fights total — 10 crackled with thrilling, bone-crunching action.

Somehow, someway, against all logic, against all evidence of their first 20 rounds together, Taylor and Serrano produced a dud. There were no thrills. There was no crunching of bones.

And I can think of 18 million reasons why.

Actually, I can think of 18,000,861 reasons why.

There’s the $18 million combined that Taylor and Serrano reportedly were guaranteed for their third fight, obliterating the women’s boxing purse record that they’d established in their second meeting. And there are the 861 combined punches CompuBox saw them landing in their first two fights.

Do the math on those numbers however you like, I know what they added up to for Taylor and Serrano: enough.

It’s not that they weren’t both trying to win. But in their first two fights — quite probably the two greatest fights in the history of women’s boxing — winning seemed a life-or-death matter. Not so on Friday night.

By the time the opening bell rang for their main event at Madison Square Garden, they’d each already won.

One might have thought that Taylor would be motivated to lay it all on the line to silence the doubters (including her opponent) who called one or both of her decision victories in their series gifts, or that Serrano would be motivated to go to hell and back one more time to finally get credited with a victory over Taylor. In other words, to borrow Thomas Hauser’s favorite line, which was indeed borrowed on the Netflix broadcast, one might have expected that they’d be fighting for “the championship of each other.”

Instead, they fought like two women suddenly wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations, two women who’d potentially chipped away at each other’s long-term cognitive abilities for 20 magnificent rounds, two women who decided it just didn’t make sense to chip away further.

To follow up those first 20 extraordinary rounds, they produced a 21st that was as dreadful a two minutes of boxing as you’ll ever see. Never mind throwing with bad intentions; Taylor and Serrano weren’t even throwing with intent to land.

They both spent the entire stanza flicking shots from a distance where those shots couldn’t possibly reach human flesh. It was as if we’d fast-forwarded 10 years to see a 49-year-old Taylor and a 46-year-old Serrano in one of those old-timer exhibitions where nostalgic fans cheer the fact that you can still circle to your left and throw a shoulder feint.

CompuBox said that in the opening round Serrano landed two punches and Taylor landed one. I suspect those numbers were rounded up.

In a strange way, that first round was the easiest to score of the entire fight. For me, it was a 10-10, without hesitation.

Just about every round of the remaining nine left me hesitating.

Taylor had a solid game plan: lure Serrano in, wait for her to lead, fire quick counters, keep the exchanges brief and trust that one clean shot here or there would be enough to win them.

Serrano seemed not to have a game plan. She lacked the patience not to lead, but she also didn’t have the willingness to trade and take incoming fire. So she chose a middle ground of pressing the action just enough to be the one pressing the action — which was everything Taylor could have asked for.

At the end of 10 rounds, scoring came down to whether the judges gave Serrano rounds for coming forward and making the fight. Based purely on clean, effective punches landed, the slight edge went to Taylor. CompuBox said the Irishwoman landed eight more power shots than did Serrano, while the Puerto Rican was far more active, throwing 151 punches more.

In total, the two future Hall of Famers landed just 140 punches combined. In their first two fights, they did that every three-and-a-half rounds, on average.

Aside from a nick under Taylor’s right eye, both boxers were basically unmarked. Those faces more or less told the story — which was that there wasn’t a story worth telling.

My scorecard showed Taylor winning by a single point, 96-95, five rounds to four with that first round even. Judge Mark Lyson had it 95-95 while Nicolas Esnault and Steve Weisfeld gave it to Taylor, 97-93. I can’t argue with any of those scores, other than the fact that all three judges got the first round wrong by insisting on declaring that somebody had won it.

Taylor having her hand raised was probably the correct conclusion to this fight — but what an absolute shame that the history books will say Serrano went 0-3 in this rivalry. She deserves better, overall.

She just didn’t do much to deserve better on Friday night.

And the fact that Serrano and Taylor fought the way they did is entirely defensible. I find it hard to be upset with either of them. They’d sacrificed more than enough. This sport had taken its proverbial pound of flesh. They’d each earned the right to secure their ability to spend all the cash they had coming.

For two fights, they beat on each other. To cap the trilogy, they beat the system.

And they guaranteed there would be no demand for a fourth fight — which seemed just fine with Taylor and Serrano. You could almost imagine them leaning in at the final bell and paraphrasing the famous Rocky Balboa-Apollo Creed exchange:

Ain’t gonna be no fourth fight.

Don’t want one.

If Taylor-Serrano III was a kick in the shins to boxing fans, the pain was soothed by the reality that the sport delivered up and down the rest of the two New York cards. And those other fights provided a notable contrast in the way that nearly every other boxer appeared maximally driven and hungry.

The queen of that particular mountain was super middleweight Shadasia Green, who upset Savannah Marshall by split decision on Friday.

Rarely has a single victory meant more to a fighter on an emotional level. I suspect if someone had offered Green one of the $9 million main event purses in exchange for having the title win over Marshall on her record, she would have turned down the money with little contemplation.

Half of Green’s post-fight interview was spent talking about the cotton sheets she sleeps on — a direct contrast with the cliché we’ve heard countless times about boxers sleeping in silk pajamas (a fine metaphor to use for what happened to Taylor and Serrano in between their second and third fights).

Green, by the way, earned the $250,000 “Performance of the Night” bonus promised by MVP Promotions, which can buy plenty of silk when she’s ready for it.

But Green was not alone on that undercard in terms of trying to make a statement.

Limited Jennifer Miranda forced Alycia Baumgardner to dig deeper than the 130lbs titlist probably expected to, but Baumgardner proved up to that challenge.

Ellie Scotney showed a hunger to impress as she boxed brilliantly against Yamileth Mercado.

Cherneka Johnson vs. Shuretta Metcalf, Chantelle Cameron vs. Jessica Camara, Ramla Ali vs. Lila Furtado — every fight showcased hungry boxers with something to prove.

And the same was true of all eight main-card fighters on the pay-per-view from Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens the following night.

Shakur Stevenson was in a particularly compelling position, viewed as a pound-for-pound talent but not a pound-for-pound entertainer, harangued by Turki Alalshikh in the lead-up as a threat to bring a “Tom and Jerry” approach to his fight with William Zepeda. (Never mind that Tom and Jerry cartoons are typically quite violent; the rule apparently is that we all just nod along with whatever the man providing the money says.)

In any case, the style matchup and Zepeda’s stick shift being stuck in fifth gear combined to give fans the fight they’ve been waiting Shakur’s whole career to see him in.

Stevenson could have used his legs to frustrate Zepeda, but he didn’t. Early on, in fact, he did the exact thing with his legs that was most deleterious to his chances of winning, backing to the ropes, giving Zepeda opportunities to hit a stationary target. But it was all by design. Stevenson (a) seemed to want to give the fans a show, (b) was confident that he could take whatever Zepeda dished out, and (c) believed letting Zepeda expend some early energy would set the stage for an easier second half of the fight for the New Jersey lightweight.

The scores — 118-110 twice and 119-109 — were insulting to Zepeda, and frankly insulting to Stevenson too, because they obscure just how much he had to adjust and adapt in order to win. This was a legit challenge for Stevenson. Zepeda landed 153 power punches, a CompuBox record against Stevenson. The slick southpaw had his hands full and had to bite down.

It was exactly what he needed.

“I came here to prove a point,” Stevenson said in the ring afterward. “It wasn’t the performance I was looking for because I took more punishment than usual, but at the of the day I told you all, whatever it takes to get the job done. I got dog in me. I’m not no puppy. I’m not no poodle. I’m a tough guy, so I fought.”

In the nominal main event, Edgar Berlanga showed himself to be a tough guy too — if not much else beyond that. There are countless reasons to criticize Berlanga as a boxer, but he showed heart.

And Hamzah Sheeraz, who knocked Berlanga down three times and stopped him 17 seconds into round five, fought like a man prepared to do whatever it took to scrub the memory of his controversial draw against Carlos Adames from people’s minds.

“After my last fight, the amount of abuse I’ve gotten on social media and in person — I understand it’s part of boxing — but it made me a hungrier fighter,” Sheeraz said.

Hungry fighters were the order of the day. In the Subriel Matias-Alberto Puello and David Morrell-Imam Khataev fights, Matias and Morrell picked up official victories — by majority and split decision, respectively — while Puello and Khataev earned moral victories and boosted their reputations with fight fans.

Morrell, in particular, showed plenty of guts, getting off the canvas in the fifth and fighting the ninth and 10th with appropriate desperation to eke out the win.

In fairness to Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano, they aren’t at the same stage of their careers as any of these other boxers.

They’re not climbing a mountain, the way Stevenson, Morrell, Sheeraz, Green, Scotney, and so many other fighters in action last weekend are.

Rather, they’re sitting atop mountains of money.

That’s great for them. It just wasn’t so great for anyone hoping to see a classic final chapter to their otherwise inspiring trilogy.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.