It’s often a source of no little puzzlement to non-boxing folk that after knocking seven bells out of each other through a bout, fighters can then bring themselves to embrace at the end and pay lavish tributes to each other. They’re made of different stuff, these people.
But that’s how it all ended up between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano come the conclusion of their epic trilogy at Madison Square Garden in July when the Bray woman made it 3-0 against the Puerto Rican to remain the undisputed world lightweight champion.
“What an amazing champion,” she said of Serrano. “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.”
Serrano, meanwhile, paid a powerful tribute in return. “Thank you, Katie Taylor, for an incredible three fights and 30 rounds. It has truly been an honour to face you, a true champion and warrior. So blessed to have shared the ring with such an amazing fighter. To be considered the Greatest, you have to act like one. She does that both in and out of the ring. Thank you truly.”
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But both fighters had been warriors through the trilogy. The first of their bouts, in 2022, also in MSG, was named “Fight of the Year” by Sports Illustrated. Taylor pipped that one by a split decision, Serrano feeling decidedly aggrieved about the result, and she was no happier when Taylor won by a unanimous decision in their second meeting, this time in Arlington, Texas. Brutal and bloody it was too, Taylor rarely having taken that level of punishment through her career.
Come the end of fight three? As our own Keith Duggan, who was there that night, put it: “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.”
It was a conclusive victory, even if one judge called it a draw while the other two scored it an emphatic 97-93 in Taylor’s favour. She put this much cleaner win down to her boxing “smart”, rather than “just ending up in a war”. She’s 39 and she’s still fine-tuning her craft.
As she reflected after, a night such as this, when the famous New York venue hosted its first all-female card, was the stuff of her dreams when she started out in the sport.
“To be headlining an all-female card was an absolute privilege,” she said. “These are the sort of opportunities that people didn’t even think possible a few years ago.”
The fight was screened live on Netflix, averaging six million viewers, which put it just behind the NCAA “March Madness” basketball final in the list of 2025’s most watched women’s sporting events. The crowd of 19,721 was the biggest ever for an all-women’s boxing card and the highest attendance for a female sporting event in MSG’s history.
Our five-time Sportswoman of the Year, as you’ll know by now, is no stranger to making history. Is there more to come? We’ll see. If she could sort out that appearance in Croke Park, you’d suspect there’s another fight left in her.
Previous monthly winners – December: Ellen Walshe (Swimming); January: Hazel Finn (Basketball); February: Lara Gillespie (Cycling); March: Kate O’Connor and Sarah Healy (Athletics); April: Aoife Wafer (Rugby); May: Katie McCabe (Soccer); June: Fiona Murtagh (Rowing).
