Amanda Serrano Gets an Undisputed Title and a Rematch With Katie Taylor

Two judges had Serrano as the winner by a score of 98-92, and a third judge scored the fight, 97-93. According to CompuBox, Serrano and Cruz combined to land 459 of 1,917 punches per two-minute round. Cruz landed 202 punches of the 968 thrown, the most by a Serrano opponent. But Serrano’s experience won out, and she landed 257 of 949 shots.

Serrano wasn’t the only one walking away with an undisputed title on Saturday. In the other main event at the Garden, Alycia Baumgardner, who lives in Detroit, defeated Elhem Mekhaled of France in a unanimous decision to become the undisputed superfeatherweight champion.

Baumgardner has been discarding her competition handily in recent months. She gave Mikaela Mayer her first professional loss in October to become the unified superfeatherweight champion in the International Boxing Federation, World Boxing Council and World Boxing Organization.

Mekhaled was no exception. In the third round, Baumgardner unleashed her power and took Mekhaled to the mat not once, but twice, within the two-minute round.

“I dug deep,” she said after the fight and was met with a swell of applause when she noted that she had just started her period, “so it’s all good.”

Baumgardner clearly had her eyes on bigger prizes.

“We want Katie Taylor, we want those better fights,” she said. “I want to challenge myself, that’s the only way I’m going to know where I’m at.”

But Serrano will have first dibs.

Serrano went through one of the most intense training camps of her career to prepare for this fight: training twice a day and sparring three times a week consistently — sometimes for 13 rounds at a time — with men. Now, to get back in the ring with Taylor, she will need to add an additional 10 pounds to meet the threshold for the lightweight class.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/sports/amanda-serrano-katie-taylor-erika-cruz.html