Rivalry that belongs in same breath as Messi vs Ronaldo

Tens of millions of viewers, huge paydays, and world titles. Alex Pattle on Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor’s supremacy as the pair ready for another titanic duel in the US tomorrow

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As one of the great fighting rivalries comes to an end, it is difficult to know where to start. How about the middle? Not just the middle rounds of the middle episode of this trilogy, but the middle of the ring in the middle of AT&T Stadium, which was the centre of the sporting world on this night in November.

They say, as you might have heard, that everything is bigger in Texas, and the gruesome gash above Amanda Serrano’s right eye adhered to this adage. As 72,000 bewitched fans watched on in the cavernous home of the Dallas Cowboys, they forgot that they were waiting for the biggest commercial fight in years: YouTuber Jake Paul’s carnivalesque clash with a 58-year-old Mike Tyson.

That fight, unsurprisingly, did not deliver on the almost incomprehensible hype, but it did deliver Netflix 60 million households’ worth of viewers. But the chief support bout? That reached the realm of mutual benefit. As Serrano and Katie Taylor went to war over the undisputed super-lightweight titles, their frenzied collisions were zapped into almost 50 million homes, producing the most absorbing advert possible for women’s boxing.

Taylor vs Serrano 2 was the most-watched women’s sporting event in US history, and one of the most-watched ever globally. Perhaps the only chasm wider than the split above Serrano’s eye was the chasm between where women’s boxing was before and after that bout.