IF SOMEBODY HAD told you at any point in the last 20 years that one day, Katie Taylor would share a professional boxing card with Mike Tyson, you might have advised them to check themselves in for a brain scan.
Welcome to 2024, when the 57-year-old former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world will face a YouTuber-turned-boxer, 30 years his junior, live on Netflix, and none of that feels especially insane.
That Taylor will defend her undisputed light-welterweight title against Amanda Serrano in the co-main event to a novelty boxing match between Tyson and Jake Paul on 20 July isn’t strange either in a modern boxing context: Serrano is promoted by Paul’s company, MVP, who have platformed the Puerto Rican to a life-changing degree since she exploded into a wider sporting consciousness on that legendary Madison Square Garden night with Taylor in May 2022.
Many of Taylor’s admirers have already baulked at the optics: how has such a sacred sportswoman found herself propping up an ostensible freak-show between two men whose only business in headlining a boxing event is business itself?
A Jake Paul undercard. Really?
Self-styled ‘Problem Child’ Paul is the antithesis to Taylor and the antichrist for anyone who didn’t grow up with a smartphone for a hand.
His online persona is loud and annoying. He is utterly void of charm. Future studies will show his global popularity to be a key checkpoint in humankind’s inexorable march towards our own destruction. ‘People watched him box, too,’ our descendants will say. ‘They were always in huge trouble.’
Paul’s 10-fight CV is less than mediocre — he’d probably win an Irish Novices title at heavyweight but he’d get blown out of the Intermediates — and yet he has done little harm to the professional sport other than accentuate its existing superficiality.
Few boxing careers embody that more emphatically than that of Mike Tyson. The former undisputed heavyweight champion was convicted of raping a woman in 1992. Tyson, who has always maintained his innocence, served just under half of his six-year prison sentence and emerged in 1995 with a more edifying personality. He was broadly subsumed back into American culture: five months after his release, his comeback fight with Peter McNeeley broke both pay-per-view and revenue records in the States (1.52 PPV buys, $63m).
For 23 of her own 24 professional fights, incidentally, Taylor has worn a black top and black trunks — with a sprinkling of gold only upon the insistence of her team that she had some sparkle. Her fight kit is modelled on her favourite boxer growing up, Russian-born Aussie Kostya Tszyu, who reigned as the men’s undisputed light-welterweight champion between 2001 and 2005. Tszyu’s look was inspired by that of Tyson, who remains as indelible a presence in both combat-sports culture and pop culture now as he was back then.
So much so, in fact, that Tyson was deemed the ultimate, needle-moving foil for Jake Paul when Netflix were putting together their landmark live-sports debut. Tyson will be 58 by the time he takes to the ring at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium.
His and Paul’s boxing match is effectively a ratings grab by the global streaming giant. Fighting out of the red corner, hailing from Brooklyn, you have the aged boxer once known as The Baddest Man on the Planet. Fighting out of the blue corner, hailing from YouTube by way of the Disney Channel, you have Another Very Famous Man who has deluded himself into thinking he’s a boxer.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ready to ru— Well, eh, let’s just see what happens…
But Katie Taylor hasn’t been conscripted to this circus. She hasn’t been let down or led astray or lured away by some nefarious suit acting in self-interest. She has simply accepted an offer for a rematch with Serrano that she wanted in any case, and one for which she will now be paid somewhere in the region of €5.5 million — significantly more than if it were to have taken place in Dublin or New York or in any other circumstance.
We are too often guilty of infantilising Taylor, an intelligent 37-year-old who is her own boss and who has already banked millions as a consequence of her decisions.
If you find yourself pointing your finger at Eddie Hearn for foisting this apparent indignity on Ireland’s golden girl, you can put it back in its holster: Taylor’s long-time promoter has nothing to do with July’s event. None of it was his idea.
Instead, this was an instance in which Taylor pushed for a fight which conceivably could have jeopardised her relationship with the promoter under whose banner she has changed the complexion of her entire sport.
Taylor’s deal with Hearn was originally predicated upon a handshake rather than a written contract. Over seven and a half years, that business relationship has naturally formalised but equally their bond has tightened — enough that when Jake Paul’s MVP made their eye-watering offer for a long-awaited Serrano sequel, Hearn effectively stepped aside as one of his flagship boxers took her business elsewhere.
The Matchroom boss intends to work with Taylor again on the flipside, absolutely. If she beats Serrano again in July, she’ll be worth even more to Hearn than she is now.
But this pause in their arrangement also suits both parties for the simple reality that there are so few mountains left for them to scale.
Taylor has already headlined at a sold-out Madison Square Garden on a night which will outlive us all. She has — at last — enjoyed two homecoming bouts in Ireland which will forever remain weaved into this country’s sporting tapestry. Croke Park was never likely to happen and it’s never going to happen. (There is less interest from both fighter and promoter in the Aviva Stadium, the juice from which wouldn’t be worth the squeeze; Croker was always the dream and when you’re 37, some dreams just die).
As sideways steps go, a rematch with your generational nemesis at the Dallas Cowboys’ 100,000-capacity stadium, live on Netflix in front of tens of millions of people, and for a career-highest paycheck that will leave you sitting pretty for the rest of your days, isn’t that bad.
As a means of qualifying their featuring on a card which will face increased scrutiny in the coming months, Taylor and Serrano will make the point relentlessly that they are bringing the women’s sport to its biggest ever stage — and they’ll be absolutely correct: the Netflix audience for their rematch will positively dwarf that which tuned in for their original fight on DAZN in 2022. Indeed, if even a small fraction of Netflix’s 260 million global subscribers tune in for the co-main event, it will boast higher viewership than the vast majority of fights this century.
But even if they were to bring women’s boxing to exactly zero new eyeballs, these two boxers shouldn’t feel the need to qualify anything. The only connection between Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano and the farcical main event that follows them is proximity. It’s really not their problem.
At 37, Katie Taylor has shouldered female boxing’s cause for over two decades. Amanda Serrano, 35, has fought the good fight adjacent to her for 15-odd years. They need carry it no further.
They’re entitled to one for themselves. Let them earn their few million quid. May the best woman win.
And when the dust settles around them in Dallas, those of us dismayed by what’s about to follow can press the ‘back’ button on our remote controls and throw on Ripley or something. We’ll be grand.
