The return fight between female stars of the sport Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano was both a thriller and a controversial fight. Now, the fight holds another distinction: that of it being the single most-watched women’s sporting event ever. Not just boxing, but all women’s sport, period. As per a news report from Sports Illustrated, the fight, which took place last Friday on the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul card and was televised by Netflix, averaged a whopping 74 million viewers.
To repeat, this reportedly makes the fight the single most-watched women’s sporting event in history. Truly amazing, and a sign of how far women’s boxing has come since it was first a thing. So, despite the controversial nature of the fight, this caused by the head clashes that we all saw, some saying they were in fact headbutts, of the deliberate kind landed by Taylor (Serrano said as much in her post-fight interview, before retracting her comments and apologising), the fight was an enormous success.
Now, fans want to see what Taylor and Serrano will do next. A third fight between the two was spoken of as soon as the scores were read out on Friday in Texas, with Taylor edging Serrano by three scores of 95-94, and both ladies called for the trilogy fight. Serrano feels she deserved the decision over Taylor in their first fight, this down at lightweight, and she feels she did enough to take Taylor’s 140 pound belts this time.
Taylor said she was not bothered by the jeers from the crowd or by the comments made by the commentary team who had Serrano winning the fight. How big could a third fight between Taylor and Serrano be? As a stand alone fight, without the benefit of a headline act like Tyson-Paul to pull in many millions of viewers to the card, can a Taylor-Serrano III achieve such lofty numbers?
One things is sure, both the two fighters and fans from all over the world want to see that third fight. It’s now up to the respective promoters to thrash out a deal. Taylor-Serrano III some time next year: who wins?
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