By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano will renew their rivalry this summer with women’s boxing on the rise, as they get another big boost from streaming service Netflix with a historic all-female card on American sport’s most legendary stage.
Taylor and Serrano made history three years ago when they became the first women to headline a card at Madison Square Garden, widely considered at the time the biggest-ever fight in women’s boxing.
This summer, they are doubling down with the first all-women’s professional boxing card at the world’s most famous arena on July 11, with every fight an undisputed or unified championship bout.
“This is your time to show the world what we are all about, to shut up these ignorant incumbents who say women’s boxing doesn’t belong here or for the new entrants who show no regard or respect for women,” promoter Jake Paul said at a media event this week.
The social media influencer-turned-fighter clawed his way into the boxing sphere through a series of fights built for the headlines, both as a boxer and through his Most Valuable Promotions boxing promotions company.
Serrano became the first fighter to sign with MVP in 2021 and her 2024 fight against Taylor – the second in their eventual trilogy – was the penultimate bout on the card that Paul and boxing great Mike Tyson headlined.
Paul beat Tyson in a clunky intergenerational showdown but it was the fight between Puerto Rican sensation Serrano and Irishwoman Taylor that earned rave reviews from fans, as almost 50 million households tuned in for the co-main event on Netflix.
The third chapter in their trilogy does not kick off for months but the excitement is already building in New York, where the first day of ticket sales already surpassed the total ticket revenue of the first match in 2022, promoters said.
“Women’s sports seem to be growing in every category. I think women’s boxing is in the same boat,” said Bob Dorfman, a sports marketing analyst and expert in San Francisco.
“Anything that’s kind of record-setting or new or something that’s never happened before in women’s sports is a good thing and Madison Square Garden is one of the most famous venues in the world and that adds more cache to it.”
The history-making fight comes with the sport on the rise, after Olympic boxing moved towards equity last summer in Paris with a new women’s weight class.
Fifty years after Caroline Svendsen reportedly became the first woman to earn a boxing licence in the United States, the fight is a sign of progress, said Risa Isard, an assistant professor of sport management at the University of Connecticut and an expert in women’s sport.
“What we’re seeing is that these seeds of growth, some of which were planted decades ago, some of them were planted three years ago, they’re blooming,” she said.
“We’ve seen for a long time this narrative that nobody cares, nobody watches. But the reality is people have cared for a long time.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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