Taylor-Serrano: 40 minutes of fury (so far) revisited, rescored, and rewatched

At the end of Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano’s second fight, while the boxers were awaiting the reveal of the judges’ scorecards, Roy Jones Jnr, one of the commentators calling the action for Netflix, declared, “This is the Ali-Frazier of female boxing.”

Call that blasphemy if you’re so inclined, but taking into account the obvious incompatibilities in the comparison — these are women who are only about two-thirds the size of the top 1970s male heavyweights, and are only permitted to box two-thirds as many rounds, with those rounds featuring two-thirds of the minute count — this is as close to the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier rivalry as you’re going to get jumping genders.

And just like Ali and Frazier, two fights weren’t enough to settle the score, so they’re about to make it a trilogy.

Yep, sticking with that “two-thirds” pattern, the Taylor-Serrano rivalry is only two-thirds over.

(Assuming there isn’t a fourth fight.)

Next Friday, July 11, Taylor and Serrano headline the greatest card in women’s boxing history (which sounds like a subjective statement, but really isn’t), at Madison Square Garden. They’ll bring the curtain down on an event with eight ladies’ bouts, six of them 10-round title fights, featuring five of the women ranked in ESPN’s women’s pound-for-pound top 10.

It's going to be a scene. It’s going to be a party. It’s probably going to be another brutal, bloody war.

And to begin to count down to it, I rewatched their first two fights — a pleasure, not a chore, I assure you. Here are my observations after reabsorbing the Ali and Frazier of the ladies game (with apologies to Laila Ali and Jacqui Frazier-Lyde) doing their thing:

These are the two all-around best women’s fights I’ve ever seen.

I’m coming out firing with an obvious take. But it’s true. These were extraordinarily thrilling, extraordinarily competitive fights, featuring a skill level you’re simply not going to top in women’s boxing.

And though their Nov. 15, 2024 rematch in Arlington, Texas, was almost certainly the more physically taxing battle, featuring pure cavewoman action down the stretch, the first one, on April 30, 2022, at MSG in NYC, was the superior fight overall.

If you only have two minutes to spare instead of 20 (or 40), rewatch the 10th round of that first fight. The crowd at the Garden was losing its damned collective mind and drowning out all other sounds as Serrano and Taylor swapped leather to the finish.

Two minute rounds between near-evenly-matched fighters are ridiculously difficult to score.

There are reasons for and against wanting the third fight to be contested using three-minute rounds, but Serrano and Taylor are sticking with two minutes next Friday, and that makes the judges’ jobs a lot harder.

I’ll get into the scoring of the second fight in the next section of this column, but focusing for now on the first fight, I must admit, I was wrong to think of this fight as a (mild) miscarriage of justice the last three years. Watching live, I scored closely for Serrano, and ever since, I’ve insisted the wrong boxer got the nod. On a close rewatch, I scored it a little differently, and I came away appreciating how absurdly close almost every single round was.

This time around, I had the fight 95-95, a draw. Only one round of the fight, the fifth — in which Serrano stiffened Taylor’s legs, nearly knocked her down, and, according to CompuBox landed exactly as many punches as Taylor threw (44) — was truly easy to score. I didn’t struggle too much to give Taylor the third or Serrano the fourth or Serrano the sixth or Taylor the ninth, but they were all competitive enough to flip if you blinked at the wrong time.

I still feel Guido Cavalleri and Glenn Feldman each giving Taylor seven rounds is a major reach, but there just wasn’t a lot to separate the two warriors in at least half the rounds, in part because there’s only so much a fighter can do to separate herself in two minutes.

Do I still feel, if the judges had to give it to someone, it should have been Serrano? Yes. I had it five rounds apiece, and Serrano won one of her rounds huge and hurt Taylor much more obviously than Taylor ever hurt her.

But I will henceforth retire any “she wuz robbed” talk. At least regarding this particular fight …

Taylor winning the rematch was an utter injustice.

While acknowledging again that two-minute rounds are difficult to score, the wrong fighter got her hand raised last November at AT&T Stadium.

I had this one 96-93 Serrano on the rewatch, and it would have been 96-94 if not for a questionable point deduction in round eight for Taylor leading with her head, but … close as the fight was and narrow as many rounds were, Serrano deserved this win. Taylor getting it just wasn’t right.

Serrano hurt Taylor with a straight southpaw left and a right hook late in round one, making it impossible for any judge to screw that one up. But two judges gave Taylor the second round (which I thought Serrano narrowly won) and all three gave the Irish fighter the third (which I thought Serrano fairly obviously won). All three also gave Taylor the sixth, a close but, to my eyes, clear enough Serrano round.

After the sixth, Serrano’s trainer, Jordan Maldonado, was pushing for the fight to be stopped due to the gaping wound over his fighter’s right eye caused by a fourth-round head clash. It probably should have been.

And Maldonado was presumably making the push in part because he was confident his fighter was ahead. She should have been.

I had it 4-2 for Serrano at that point and, watching it live, understood why, on multiple levels, her trainer thought ending the fight there was in her best interest. But she would have lost 58-56 on all cards, an offense right on par with … well, the actual decision we all heard announced four rounds later.

I know you don’t score fights using CompuBox stats, but Serrano was seen landing 54 of 97 punches in the seventh round, compared to 35 of 79 for Taylor, and one judge still scored that one for Taylor.

According to CompuBox, Serrano outlanded Taylor in nine of the 10 rounds, and outlanded her in power punches in eight of the 10 rounds — and, oh, by the way, has demonstrated in the two fights that she’s the harder puncher, so it’s not just a matter of winning on quantity.

All three judges ended up with 95-94 cards for Taylor, which is close enough to not sound like a robbery — but which is also frustrating because it means any individual round any of them denied Serrano would have flipped the fight on that card.

After the first fight, when Taylor’s hand was raised, Serrano appeared disappointed but OK with it and proud to have been a part of something so special. After the second fight, when the “and still” escaped the ring announcer’s lips, the Puerto Rican couldn’t hide her anger. Understandably so, to these rewatching eyes.

Serrano tends to fade more than Taylor as these fights wear on.

In the first fight, I gave Taylor three of the last five rounds (though, again, they were all close). In the rematch, I gave Taylor four of the last seven. Katie seems to hold her form just a bit better and, other than in the 10th round of the second fight when she was falling in and eating uppercuts as a result, to have slightly superior stamina.

This despite Serrano doing the better body work in both fights.

Perhaps it’s because Taylor is the naturally larger fighter, a lightweight/junior welterweight fighting a foe who could still make featherweight.

Whatever the reason, I couldn’t help but wonder: Is it really Serrano who would be helped by three-minute rounds? Clearly, Serrano wants the extra minute per round and Taylor doesn’t. But I’m not so sure their desires shouldn’t be reversed.

Both fighters were better in the first fight than in the second.

In April ’22, Serrano was 33 and Taylor 35. Two-and-a-half years later, for the rematch, they were 36 and 38. So it shouldn’t be surprising to observe that they’d slowed down some between fights (especially with the wear of their first battle and their interim fights taking effect).

Maybe the higher weight for the second fight had something to do with it too. (Serrano in particular was soft around the middle, after sporting six-pack abs at MSG in 2022.)

Anyway, it was apparent from the start that they were both a fraction of a step slower. And in the last couple of rounds, technique was fading from view in a way it hadn’t the first time they fought.

It makes you wonder if further deterioration may announce itself next week.

For what it’s worth, Taylor turned 39 yesterday. Age is just a number, as they say. But maybe this particular number helps explain why Serrano, despite officially being 0-2 so far in this series, is the betting favorite at all sportsbooks for the third fight.

Other assorted rewatch observations …

• I still don’t know what promoter Jake Paul’s get-up in the ring for the first fight was supposed to be. He was wearing a bowtie and half a black vest slung under one of his arms. He looked a cross between a stoner handing out bacon-wrapped shrimp during cocktail hour and a modern art installment.

• The crowd at the Garden for the first fight didn’t wait until round 10 to get deafeningly loud. Ref Michael Griffin couldn’t hear the bell to end the third round, and Taylor was the one who eventually informed him it was time for her to return to her corner.

• The Mike Tyson bare-ass interview that aired on Netflix between the third and fourth rounds of the rematch will never not be hilarious. It really makes for a perfect amuse bouche between courses of in-ring violence. (“Amuse booty,” perhaps? I’m workshopping it. Bear with me.)

• The Texas crowd booed Taylor during her interview following the rematch — and it’s not because anyone in the world has any personal dislike for Katie Taylor. It’s because close fights can have lousy decisions, and sometimes everyone other than the three judges knows what they saw.

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 and the author of 2014’s . He can be reached on , , or , or via email at [email protected].