Katie Taylor-Amanda Serrano Is Sports Illustrated’s Fight of the Year

As 2022 winds down, Sports Illustrated is looking back at the themes and teams, storylines and throughlines that shaped the year.

Transport back to April, to Madison Square Garden, to a 10th round that featured two champions standing inside a ring and never straying from each other, as if tethered to the moment and what it meant. The crowd rose and roared. Flurries were delivered without pause. The exchanges never stopped. A full 142 punches were doled out in that final two-minute stanza alone. And, when a bout of historical significance ended, there was a sense, already, that on this night, Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano had engaged in far more than a slugfest.

Instead, they had delivered a performance that epic fairly describes, that those who were there—and those who watched on television—will remember for the rest of their lives. This was boxing at its best. Not women’s boxing. Boxing, period.

To that end, when it came to selecting boxing’s best fight of the last year, some parameters were established. Sports Illustrated did not pick the best female fight from 2022. We have factored in historical implications. We are aware Dmitry Bivol upset Canelo Alvarez and that Alvarez thumped Gennady Golovkin in the third, most decisive and most mundane bout of their excellent trilogy. But, given all those factors, one night stood far taller than the rest.

It was Taylor-Serrano, and it wasn’t particularly close. For more than 100 years, Madison Square Garden has staged some of the most momentous bouts in the rich history of boxing. Many would argue that no single venue has been as important to a particular sport. But until that magical night in April, two women had never headlined a card at MSG.

Taylor and Serrano didn’t just headline, either. Their enticing match-up netted more than 19,000 customers, a sellout for the arena configuration that night. Puerto Ricans came out for Serrano; Irish boxing die-hards descended for Taylor. Women’s boxing royalty—Christy Martin, Laila Ali, Rosie Perez—felt compelled to attend. There were chants. There was electricity. The setting elevated to match the stakes.

In the week leading up to that night, Taylor told reporters that the fight itself mattered as much as the billing and the history involved. It wouldn’t be enough to stage an unprecedented event. They needed the setting, the stakes and the action. Needed to entertain. To hit and hit back. To do what both had done as they climbed pound-for-pound lists and collected titles.

Taylor, 35, was the more accomplished boxer; Serrano, 33, was smaller but appeared to pack more wallop in her punches. Taylor was already a hero back home; a decorated amateur and flag bearer for Ireland at the 2012 London Olympics, where she won gold, while raising the profile of women’s boxing at home and all over the world. But she flopped at the Olympics in…