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Katie Taylor: scheduled to fight on 22 August. Gary Carr/INPHO

Katie Taylor set for August title defence but no opponent confirmed

Amanda Serrano was expected to sign on for the clash on the Dillian Whyte v Alexander Povetkin card.

KATIE TAYLOR’S HIGHLY anticipated fight against Amanda Serrano is still in the balance. 

Eddie Hearn this afternoon announced the schedule for his Fight Camp series which will be hosted on his own property and broadcast by Sky. 

Taylor will fight on 22 August in the last week of the run but an opponent has not been confirmed.  

The Bray native was set to defend her WBA, WBC, IBF, WBO and The Ring lightweight belts against the Puerto Rican seven-weight champion at Manchester Arena on 2 May.  

Those plans were ultimately ripped up on 30 March amid the growing Covid-19 crisis.  

It was widely expected the fight would be refixed today as a co-main event to Dillian Whyte’s heavyweight bout against Alexander Povetkin.

Amanda Serrano and her manager Jordan Maldonado recently claimed they were backing out of the fight again because Hearn had offered her only approximately half of her original purse for the rescheduled fight. 

It remains to be seen if negotiations will eventially get the deal over the line, but the Irish Independent reported earlier this week that Hearn has contacted Taylor’s other nemesis, Delfine Persoon, with a view to making a long-awaited rematch between the pair in the event that Serrano does not agree to terms.

‘Fight Camp’, as the upcoming series of contests has been dubbed, will begin on Saturday, August 1 in Brentwood, Essex with Sam Eggington putting his IBF international super-welterweight title on the line against Ted Cheeseman.

Fighters will be expected to enter a bubble ahead of their matches and, alongside officials, staff and media, will undergo testing for Covid-19.

“We’ve of course got Madison Square Garden, this is Matchroom Square Garden,” Hearn told Sky Sports News.

“We’ve been working diligently with the British Boxing Board of Control for the last three months. We’re in a position where we know the procedures that have to take place to make the sport safe to return.

“We feel like we’ve done it at the right time, we feel like everything’s safe. We’ve got a brilliant schedule of fights lined up and we can’t wait to bring boxing back to your screens.

“We have no crowd, we don’t have the 80,000 singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ and have the energy of the audience but what we do have is the beauty of boxing, the rawness of the sport.

“We need to make sure those fights are compelling.”

- additional reportoing PA 

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