Boxing · 2022 · New York, USA
Boxing History at the Garden
The first women's fight ever to headline Madison Square Garden turns out to be one of the best fights, by any boxers, in years.
Taylor def. Serrano, split decision
Result
First women's fight to headline MSG
Distinction
10
Rounds
Women's professional boxing had spent decades arguing for mainstream billing when Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano were booked to headline a full Madison Square Garden card on 30 April 2022, the first time a women's bout had topped the bill at the venue in its history. Taylor was the undisputed lightweight champion and Serrano a seven-weight world champion, and either had a legitimate claim to being the best pound-for-pound female fighter in the sport.
It lived up to the occasion: fast, technically excellent and genuinely close across all ten rounds, in front of a sold-out Garden crowd that spent most of the night on its feet. Taylor won by split decision, by a margin narrow enough that plenty of ringside observers had scored it the other way.
Whether women's boxing could sell out a major arena and headline a premium broadcast card on its own merits stopped being a question that night, and the run of high-profile women's fights that followed came directly out of it. Taylor and Serrano met twice more in the years afterward.
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