NEW YORK – Amanda Serrano knew what she was leaving on the table when she walked away from a then career-best payday for a fight with Katie Taylor nearly two years ago.
Already a seven-division titlist, Serrano was within reach of becoming the first-ever undisputed world champion from Puerto Rico—male or female. A dispute over where the rescheduled bout would land and her due compensation for fighting literally in the backyard of Taylor’s promoter, Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing headquarters in Brentwood, England ultimately killed those plans and leaving Serrano without a sound back-up plan.
The Boricua southpaw and her trainer/manager/brother-in-law Jordan Maldonado were willing to take short-term criticism while playing the long game. However, there was also the awareness that she was on the hook to eventually make the superlight happen.
“You guys would not let us not have this fight,” Serrano confessed to BoxingScene.com. “Every question after my fight or her fight was always, “How about Serrano?” to her and “How about Katie?” to me. You guys would not let us not have it. But I was pretty confident that was gonna happen.”
It didn’t come right away. Ireland’s Taylor (20-0, 6KOs) has since racked up five defenses of her undisputed lightweight championship, while Brooklyn’s Serrano (42-1-1, 30KOs)—true to record-breaking career form—has fought four times in three different weight classes over that same period. The final fight for each pound-for-pound entrant came one week apart last December, and with the preliminary understanding that their next fight would be against one another.
By that point, Serrano had left Hall of Fame promoter Lou DiBella after a contentious but mostly productive run of more than five years to become the first athlete to sign with content creator Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions. Paul (5-0, 4KOs as a novice cruiserweight) hit the ground running to work out terms with Eddie Hearn, Taylor’s career-long promoter.
The end result is the first female main event to ever take place at the iconic Madison Square Garden in New York City (Saturday, DAZN, 7:30 p.m. ET).
Both fighters will make seven-figure paydays, which for Serrano is more than triple what she would have earned for an August 2020 fight overseas and without a crowd during the pandemic. A chance for the 33-year-old Boricua southpaw to create even more history in a career spent shattering records now comes minutes from her hometown and with an anticipated crowd of 17,000-18,000 on fight night.
The event has been met with an unprecedented level of press coverage, including a photo shoot atop the Empire State Building and a joint appearance by both pound-for-pound superstars on Tuesday’s edition of the long-running ‘The Today Show’ morning news show on NBC.
“We always knew this fight was gonna happen, just not at this magnitude,” noted Serrano, who has won titles in every weight division from 115- to 140-pounds. “Once Jake Paul put his name on it, it just flew off the roof from there.
“I’m truly honored and Katie, too, we’re both making our biggest payday. I’m truly blessed and honored. We’re at the mecca of boxing, so it’s super excited.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
