On Friday night, or early Saturday morning if you’re in Ireland, Katie Taylor will face Amanda Serrano in what seems certain to be the most watched female boxing match in history.
Just under two and a half years ago, the Irish undisputed lightweight world champion beat the Puerto Rican in a thrilling fight that was the first women’s bout to headline Madison Square Garden.
That split-decision hair-raiser at the sport’s most prestigious venue in New York was watched by 1.5 million people on streaming service DAZN, a record only eclipsed by the two million who tuned in to Sky Sports’ all-female card headlined by Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall later that year.
This weekend’s long-awaited Taylor v Serrano sequel will be streamed live on Netflix, at no extra cost to its 282 million global subscribers. Expect records to be shattered.
Taylor will reportedly earn over $6m for putting her belts (super-lightweight this time) on the line again, almost six times the purse she received in 2022. Serrano has claimed her payday will be even bigger.
It seems like another step forward in the battle for equal esteem for women’s sports.
And yet, Taylor-Serrano II will not be the main event in front of 60,000+ spectators at the Texas stadium of the Dallas Cowboys NFL team.
That honour is reserved for the heavyweight clash of former world champion Mike Tyson and Serrano’s promoter Jake Paul, who will reportedly earn at least $60m between them.
That a fight between a 58-year-old convicted rapist and a YouTube star should take top billing over the rematch of arguably the top two female boxers in the world is depressing but then it isn’t the first boxing freak show to attract public interest.
In 2017, former amateur boxer and then UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor talked his way into taking on 40-year-old Floyd Mayweather Jr in what was the undefeated five-weight world title winner’s last professional bout.
Mayweather Jr duly went back into retirement with a 50-0 record, eclipsing Rocky Marciano’s unbeaten 49, after stopping the Dubliner in the tenth round.
Irish fans who regretted paying €25 to watch the American king of the counter toy with his opponent – he barely threw a punch in the first three rounds – could at least count themselves lucky that they hadn’t been watching in the US, where the pay-per-view price was a staggering $100 to watch in HD.
Mayweather reportedly earned at least $100m from the event and McGregor upwards of $75m. Marshall was paid $5,000 for appearing in the only female bout on the card, in what was her professional debut.
Since then, ‘Money’ Mayweather has continued to live up to his nickname by taking on lucrative exhibition bouts against other MMA fighters – including the grandson of the late mafioso John Gotti – a Japanese kickboxer and Paul’s older brother Logan, who helped to kickstart the phenomenon of the ‘influencer boxer’ when he lost a white-collar bout to fellow social media star KSI, which was streamed on YouTube pay per view by almost as many people (1.3m) as watched Taylor-Serrano.
In fairness to Jake Paul, he has beaten a smattering of professional MMA fighters in the ring, including Nate Diaz – who inflicted McGregor’s first UFC defeat. And since losing his first fight to a ‘proper boxer’ in Tyson Fury’s cousin Tommy (or at least one who takes a career break to go on Love Island) Paul has beaten a couple of journeyman pros to take his record to 10-1-0.
He is now taking on the one-time ‘baddest man on the planet’, who dominated the heavyweight division in his 1980s prime, before surrendering his belts to 42/1 underdog James ‘Buster’ Douglas in 1990 and going on to lose title fights to Evander Holyfield (the second for biting a chunk out of his opponent’s ear) and Lennox Lewis after spending three years in jail.
The problem is, Tyson (50-6-0) is approaching 60 and hasn’t fought professionally since losing to Monaghan man Kevin McBride in 2005. He did impress in an exhibition against fellow former superstar Roy Jones Jr (55) in 2020, but it’s staggering that Texas authorities have sanctioned this as a pro fight, even with the caveats of heavier gloves and eight two-minute rounds. The initial date in June had to be postponed after Tyson was hospitalised with a stomach ulcer in May and Paul (27) is a hot favourite to win.
So while Taylor and Serrano might be grateful that they are getting the kind of payday through the latter’s promoter that would otherwise prove impossible – see Eddie Hearn’s abortive attempts to book Croke Park – you could also argue that a top-line bout with a record 31-year age gap needs Taylor-Serrano II as a ‘co-main event’ just as much as the reverse, to provide legitimacy and supply the ‘sport’ part of the sports content.
If the Bray woman is holding her nose at the tawdry main event, she is doing a good job at disguising it. She described Tyson as “an absolute legend in sport” and “a hero to many of us fighters” this week, while also paying tribute to Ireland’s first female world champion Deirdre Gogarty and Christy Martin, who appeared on the undercard of the Tyson-Frank Bruno rematch in 1996. Taylor’s childhood hero Gogarty was paid .0005% ($3,000) of her fee to face Serrano this weekend.
“They were pioneers of the sport and I don’t feel we would be in the position we are in today if it wasn’t for those women,” Taylor said. “Those girls had pressure going into the ring that day and they came out as heroes. And I will be forever grateful for them because they are the reason we are here right now.”
While admitting the offer was too good for Taylor to turn down, her promoter Hearn has called the Tyson-Paul bout “dangerous, irresponsible and disrespectful to boxing” and says he’ll leave without watching it after seeing his fighter in action.
The motivation for Netflix is harder to figure out. Whatever about parting the gullible from their greenbacks for a one-off pay-per-view, you would wonder how many new long-term subscribers they will get for their estimated $80m layout. Though they can sell ads that around a quarter of their viewers have to watch in return for a lower monthly rate.
Perhaps they also consider showing a first live boxing match an investment to burnish their credentials as a sports platform, as video-on-demand competitors like Amazon Prime (NBA, NFL, Premier League), Apple TV+ (Major League Soccer) and Disney+ (UEFA competitions, ESPN) continue to move in on the legacy broadcasters’ traditional turf of live events.
Netflix is also paying the NFL $150 million to stream two games on Christmas Day and is giving wrestling promotion the WWE a staggering $500m a year to show its unique brand of ‘sports entertainment’ for the next decade.
Regardless of the why, and the dubious appeal of the headline act, it’s good to see Taylor and Serrano get the audience and rewards their skills deserve. Hopefully they again show everybody watching how great boxing can be, before the clowns enter the Circus Netflixus.
Follow Katie Taylor v Amanda Serrano from 2am Saturday with our live blog on RTÉ.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app
