‘I’m still a small bit emotional’ – Katie Taylor reflects on where women's boxing has come from
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In Amanda Serrano, Katie Taylor sees all that she needs right now. It doesn’t matter that it is Texas instead of Croke Park, it doesn’t matter that it is run by a different promotional company, it doesn’t matter that the main event is a freak show. What she wants above all else is a rival.
For so long she faced doubts about the validity of the sport and depth of the field. Taylor’s singular talent transformed the business, but it was not an individual pursuit. Serrano is a boxer who set a record by winning nine major world titles across seven different classes. She played her part in a historic showdown at Madison Square Garden two years ago and used her own selling power, backed by the promotional company of main event participant Jake Paul, to make this AT&T Stadium bout a reality.
Ability, prestige, influence, history; all of that combined separates Serrano from a growing list of contenders to the throne. Chantelle Cameron is the sole fighter to categorically best Taylor professionally but her recent split from promoter Eddie Hearn and her trainer lessens any leverage. Delfine Persoon was dismissed in the rematch. Alycia Baumgardner and Caroline Dubois are coming. The Puerto Rician ‘Real Deal’ has already arrived. Taylor’s initial dismantling of Serrano’s sister Cindy back in 2018, the fight of the year in 2022, the collection of IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO women's super-lightweight titles, it has all led to this point.
“You have to have a good dance partner and myself and Amanda's names will be embedded together forever in the history of the sport,” Taylor said at the public workout late Tuesday.
"We're doing it again on Friday night. This is absolutely epic and exactly what every fighter wants really.” Arlington is a fitting venue for a Texas-sized feud. Situated right between Fort Worth and Dallas, two cities with a long history of clashing as neighbouring towns often do. Fort Worth feels like forever the sidekick. The city of cowboys and culture that deliberately contrasts itself from the big, bold and brash cosmopolitan centre that is Dallas.
Fort Worth is home to the famous daily longhorn cattle drive. Stewards steer the enormous herd down the main street and its saloons, steakhouses, boots and saddlery shops. Tourists can climb on the longhorn cattle for free, getting back down will cost you ten dollars. “Texas math,” laughs the drover.
Meanwhile, Dallas is diverse. Downtown there is a thriving business district. The crowd at the Music Factory for Tuesday’s public workout was vast and varied and strikingly carefree. Any actual workout felt like background noise, apt given Friday’s fight marks Netflix’s first venture into the world of professional boxing broadcasts.
Mike Tyson was the main draw. Scores of smartphone wielding fans spun and left once he finished hitting the pads and flashing his newly conditioned body. The 58-year-old is the underdog at the top of the bill but told his screeching fanatics that he has discovered something in preparation for Friday.
“I am tougher than I believed I was. Actually, when I agreed to this fight, I said what the fuck was I thinking. I finished the process and now the fight is the party. All the hard work is done.”
Some of his children watched on from ringside.
“Family is everything. To my children I am nobody. That night they are going to find out their father is very special.” And for the briefest of moments everyone gets a sense of the aura the Baddest Man on the Planet once projected and the thrill of his hunt. Then you remember how that same aura dissipated, how he stepped away after a humiliating loss to Kevin McBride and apologised to fans who paid to watched it.
It is curiosity appeal, not class, that will attract an enormous crowd to stream Friday’s fight. The Youtuber turned pugilist closed out the gig wearing a rooster hat as a nod to his nickname since moving to Puerto Rico, El Gallo. It is also the same event that laid the foundation for the construction of Serrano vs Taylor II. Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions will run the show top to bottom. Eddie Hearn, who has been integral to Taylor’s career in the paid ranks so far, will attend but purely as a fan.
Taylor knows what it took to make this happen. She knows how supportive those behind her have been too. When asked about the constant presence of her mother, Bridget, she began to choke up.
“She is the biggest support,” was her succinct summary.
She is often at her most expressive when talking about Ireland’s first female world champion, Deirdre Gogarty. Her 1996 fight against American Christy Martin on the undercard of Mike Tyson against Frank Bruno is part of this story. Gogarty was famously paid just $3,000 to fight on 10 days' notice and battled a 15lbs weight difference. Now Taylor is reportedly set to make over $6 million.
"I have to compose myself,” she said as she moved on to consider her childhood hero, the woman to whom she sent a letter as a child to ask for advice on how to make it in a sport with so many obstacles.
“I am still a small bit emotional but yeah, I think what the likes of Deirdre Gogarty and Christy Martin have done for women's boxing, they are pioneers of the sport.
"I don't feel like we'd be in the position today if it wasn't for those women. You look at Christy Martin versus Deirdre Gogarty, they were on a Mike Tyson undercard and absolutely incredible.
"I think they were getting booed going to the ring that day, but it was actually the fight of the night and on the way out of the ring they got a standing ovation.
"That is one of the biggest moments in women's boxing for me. I don't think it gets talked about as much as it should really. An absolutely iconic moment for the sport.
"Talk about pressure. Those girls were under pressure going into the ring that day and they came out as heroes and I'll be forever grateful for women like that because that's the reason we're here right now and so I'm just very, very grateful.
"I am surprised that it took so long for women's boxing to get to this stage but I'm glad that we got here. I feel like there is a lot more ground to take but I'm very, very happy that we got to the point where we are making good money and I hope that continues.”
It will be early Saturday morning in Ireland by time they trade leather in the Dallas Cowboys stadium, right in the middle of those two squabbling cities. They have already demonstrated how these things can tend to go.
In the late 19th century, Dallas and Fort Worth went head-to-head in the first Texas League baseball series between the two cities. It ended in a gunfire and a grandstand brawl.