Find me a better stylistic contrast than Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor. Serrano’s heavy, thudding hands racing Taylor’s quicker, sharper mitts to their facial targets. Taylor tip-toeing the perimeter of the ring, trying to box; Serrano walking her down, awaiting her opponent’s inevitable submission to the brawl. Taylor’s quicksilver combinations. Serrano’s damaging single shots. Each woman scoring their points in those murderous, staccato two-minute salvos. 

Who won the round, the fight? Pick whichever style you like, boxing’s demented scoring system cries merrily.

None of the 20 rounds Taylor and Serrano have contested merit a complaint. What might is that of the six judges for those two 50-50 fights, 83 per cent of them leaned Taylor’s way. No sport does this like the fight game: two boxers shave a few years off each other’s lives in an even bout, just the way the fans like it, and one loses for no discernable reason. 

Serrano’s career deserves better representation. Since her professional debut in 2009, she has ricocheted around the weight classes like a particularly energetic pinball. Here is a stretch of consecutive weights she made before fights in a 30-month stretch, courtesy of BoxRec: 118, 121.75, 127.75, 138.5, 114.25 (!), 125.75, 131.5. Serrano’s record during this period? 7-0 (5 KOs). 

Then there’s Serrano’s stature as a pioneer of modern women’s boxing. She was one of the first two female fighters to box across 12 three-minute rounds, alongside Danila Ramos, who she beat. She pushed for her fights with Taylor to take place in the longer format too. Taylor turned her down. 

Regrettably, the biggest events almost unilaterally sculpt mainstream discourse about the fighters. Casual fans don’t know or care that Serrano established command over a gaudy range of weight classes. They know her as the fighter who lost twice to Katie Taylor – they may think, justifiably, that she got screwed one or both times. But that is how they know her nonetheless. Gennadiy Golovkin’s support group is arranging a comfortable chair and a fresh drink for Serrano as we speak.

Throughout the 20 hellish rounds she shared with Taylor, Serrano had to negotiate with Taylor’s caffeinated hand speed and footwork, plus a gaping cut the size of a third eye in the rematch. But she also had to deal with Taylor initiating a few too many clinches, and putting her head down and pushing Serrano into the ropes an eyebrow-raising number of times. Already operating within smaller time windows than she wanted, each clinch and the accompanying five-second toll from the clock must have felt to Serrano like getting teeth pulled. 

“Holding,” she said helplessly to the referee in the rematch after Taylor initiated a series of clinches in the fourth round. Holding is a part of the sport, for better and worse, but it’s hard to take when only one fighter repeatedly seeks to avoid engaging and isn’t dinged for it on the scorecards. 

“Hey, watch your holding,” referee Jon Schorle said to Taylor before the start of the sixth round. “You’re better than that.” Pep talks, apparently, are the new point deductions. Eventually, Schorle did take a point from Taylor for headbutting; taking another for holding would have made the fight a draw.

Despite her success throughout the rivalry, Serrano has always been a little starved of time. 

With one more minute in the murderous fifth round of their first fight, she might have gotten a stoppage. Same goes for the first round of the rematch, when she sent Taylor staggering into the ropes with a big left. Maybe the time she spent locked in clinches could have made a difference in either fight. We’ll never know; she wasn’t given those seconds. 

Now, Serrano is in need of more time yet again. In another boxing specialty, a two-fight series has proven unable to reveal a superior fighter. So there must be a trilogy. Katie Taylor, though, is 38 years old. She is also embroiled in another rivalry with the only woman to officially beat her, Chantelle Cameron. Taylor could fight Cameron a third time before Serrano; Cameron was promised a trilogy and had to wait as Taylor and Serrano went at it again. 

If Taylor goes in that direction, she’ll be 39 after the fight and bookending camps and recoveries. And I would say she would have the right to retire by then, except that she has already earned that right about two dozen times. Even if Taylor does want to square up with Serrano once more, age might have stolen the elusive blend of qualities and styles that electrified their first two fights by the time the third happens.

I do not think Serrano, or any conceivable Taylor opponent, can knock Taylor out. 

She is too slippery and savvy, even when dazed. As Serrano knows well, Taylor is extremely difficult to win a decision against, too. If outlanding Taylor by more than 100 punches overall in the rematch and landing more power punches in eight of the ten rounds wasn’t enough, it’s hard to imagine what will be. A third fight might just go the same way as the first two – a potent, violent crowd-pleaser after which Taylor wins closely on the cards. Another year of age does not figure to endear her further to 12 three-minute rounds. 

Serrano herself fought in the long format for the first and only time just over a year ago, shortly after her 35th birthday. Perhaps women’s boxing wasn’t quite ready for her.

What we have now is a 2-0 record for Katie Taylor against Amanda Serrano, which is not undeserved but does a terrible job of representing their nip-and-tuck rivalry. If these two fights can produce a win-loss total that looks the same as that of Haney-Kambosos, this sport is doing something catastrophically wrong. Those who watched the fights should know that Serrano deserved better, and until a trilogy bout, that’ll have to be enough. 

Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector Media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel, and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on