The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Star boxer Katie Taylor against Amanda Serrano: Battle of the giants on the big stage

2022-04-30T11:06:05.889Z


Two female boxers fill the Madison Square Garden in New York, that has never happened before. The fight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano is staged as an event. But does it also stand for the global boom in women's boxing?


Enlarge image

Katie Taylor (left) and Amanda Serrano fight to a packed house in New York

Photo:

IMAGO/Matt Davies/IMAGO/ZUMA Wire

Madison Square Garden is a sanctuary for boxing.

Anyone who is allowed to compete here in the heart of Manhattan has made it.

Ali and Frazier were in the ring there, Holyfield boxed Lennox Lewis.

The Garden calls itself »The World's Most Famous Arena«.

It has around 20,000 seats and has seen it all.

But not this yet.

Katie Taylor boxed against Amanda Serrano on Sunday night, for the first time in history two women formed the main act of a boxing event in Madison Square Garden.

When the two most successful boxers in the world meet, it can't be any size smaller.

Boxing needs spectacle, there is now far too little of it, the duel between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao was one of those in 2015, then jazzed up to the fight of the century by insane fight exchanges.

It's no coincidence that promoter Eddie Hearn dubbed Saturday's fight "Female Mayweather-Pacquiao."

Hearn is one of the big players in the business, his company Matchroom has Anthony Joshua under contract, among others.

Four years ago, Hearn struck a $1 billion deal with sports streaming service Dazn, giving Dazn the broadcast rights to all Matchroom fights.

And since men's boxing beyond Joshua, Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk currently has little glamor to offer, the fight on Saturday will also be an important event for Matchroom and Dazn.

The conditions for selling out the Garden are good.

Taylor is Irish, an absolute star in her country, and the large Irish community in New York will support her.

As a Puerto Rican and local New York hero, Serrano also attracts a large following.

The calculation of Matchroom and the cooperation partner Most Valuable Promotions of the boxer and Youtuber Jake Paul should pay off.

champion of her sport

In any case, there can be little doubt about the appeal of this encounter.

Taylor is the champion of all major boxing associations in the lightweight division, now 35 years old, her Olympic victory in London is ten years ago, but she is still the undisputed star of the scene.

19 years ago she stood in the ring in Dublin for the first-ever women's boxing match on Irish soil.

Taylor is truly a champion of her sport.

However, her opponent Amanda Serrano is not much less decorated.

The 33-year-old is the first female boxer to win world titles in seven different weight classes.

Her last loss dates back to 2012, after which she has won 28 fights.

It's a duel between the giants of their sport.

A duel that becomes even more explosive because Taylor beat Serrano's older sister Cindy unanimously on points in 2018.

So Saturday is also about a family revenge.

"It's incredible how far women's boxing has come in just the past five years," Taylor said at Wednesday's press conference.

"Now we're making history, all our hard work has paid off." That may be true for her and Serrano, but it would be presumptuous to take Saturday's record fight as an example of a global boom in women's boxing.

Germany is having a hard time

In Germany, where boxing is currently experiencing a slump anyway, the public is still struggling with it.

The times when Regina Halmich filled the halls are long gone.

There hasn't been anyone close to her in terms of celebrity and reputation for years.

When Nina Meinke boxed for the featherweight world title a week ago in Copenhagen, it was largely lost in the media.

Unlike in 2017, when Meinke competed against Katie Taylor in London's Wembley Stadium.

Tens of thousands watched back then, but they came mainly to see Anthony Joshua box against Wladimir Klitschko afterwards.

Taylor and Serrano are the exceptional athletes on the scene, the fight between the two has been around for a long time.

It was supposed to happen in 2020, Corona and a dispute about the battle exchanges between the two managements prevented the fight at the time.

"We both changed the sport, we opened doors," said Serrano on Wednesday, and for Taylor and she is indeed true.

But they're probably the only ones left to fill Madison Square Garden with.

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2022-04-30

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.