AMANDA SERRANO is 33 years old and has never owned
a cellphone. She has never been on a date. She claims
“no friends” beyond her close-knit family. She does have
social media accounts but doesn’t run them, save for the
occasiona l check-in on a bor rowed dev ice. A nd, inside t his
mundane world she has created, she names but two vices:
watching movies and shopping. Even then, her preferred
store is Amazon’s website.
“I’m probably going to beat the 40-year-old virgin,”
she says with a laugh over a Zoom call.
Serrano is a walking, punching, abstaining contradic-
tion. A series of them, in fact. The human—daughter, sister,
Prime delivery devotee—describes herself as “boring.”
The professional boxer—42-1-1, 30 knockouts, champion
in seven weight divisions—is a thunderous in-ring stalker
who so acutely disfigured her last opponent’s face she
“felt bad” for how she won.
How the person became the champion is the story
of those contradictions. They help explain Serrano, her
endless sacrifice and her 15-year pursuit of ambitions
she could never completely define until recently. Years
of earning three-figure paydays in rinky-dink gyms, fol-
lowed by years of collecting belts in anonymity, followed
by, well, something like fate. And in the form of a social
media inf luencer, no less.
Many traditionalists view that inf luencer, 25-year-old
Jake Paul, as the worst part of a sport with no shortage of
issues. But to Serrano, he’s the person—a “kid,” she calls
him—who shone a spotlight over her low-slung career
trajectory until it pointed at the most significant fight
in the history of women’s boxing.
Thus the contradictions continue, heightened by the
twist. The boxer who never owned a cellphone signed
with the boxer-promoter whose fame resulted from the
ubiquity of the devices tucked into so many pockets. The
kid from New York who knew Madison Square Garden
as little more than a building will soon partake in the
venue’s first women’s boxing main event, where she’ll try
to take four belts from Katie Taylor. The toiler is doing
the same things—taking fights and winning them—
only now, strangers, teenagers especially, recognize
her on the street. “I can’t believe people are excited to
see me,” Serrano says. “I’m always like, ‘Why? I’m a
normal person.’ ” Albiet one with nine world titles in
weight classes that range from 115 to 140 pounds and a
place in Guinness World Records for number of divisions
vanquished (seven) by a female fighter.
Another contradiction: The boxer who stands on the
precipice of history never planned to box. Serrano remem-
bers watching only one pro bout in her entire childhood:
Oscar De La Hoya vs. Félix Trinidad, a blockbuster featur-
ing two undefeated champions held in September 1999.
Because their family is Puerto Rican, and because Trinidad
was their champion, the Serranos held a party at the
house they still share in Brooklyn. Young Amanda missed
Trinidad’s triumph; after a few rounds, she had gone
outside to play. But as she watched the post-fight revelry,pure joy spreading across the faces of her relatives, she
noticed something else: the significance.
The power of that night didn’t hit Amanda until later,
long after her sister, Cindy, met Jordan Maldonado, a box-
ing trainer. Amanda was 12 when Cindy started heading
to Maldonado’s gym for workouts. Sometimes, Amanda
tagged along, wanting to be near her “idol,” her older
sister by six years. As weeks turned into months, Amanda
watched, passively. But on one random Saturday afternoon
in 2001, she jumped into an informal sparring session
on a whim. She did well and returned the next weekend
and the weekend after that. Only on that day, her third
as a “boxer,” Maldonado placed Amanda opposite a boy
who knew how to punch. “He kept fighting back,” she
says, recalling the tears that fell from her bruised face.
From that third session until age 18, she worked at
the gym but never boxed. Until one day, while reading a
newspaper, she spied an ad for the most prestigious local
amateur tournament, the New York Golden Gloves. On
another whim, she entered.
When she told Maldonado of her plan, he stif led a laugh.
These were real boxers who could inf lict serious damage.
But Amanda persisted, until Maldonado turned to her
and said, simply, “Suit up.” This time, the sisters sparred
with each other, so that, Amanda says, “she could beat [the
42 notion] out of me.” Amanda cried after that session, too,
JA
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SWIPE
LEFT
In her first
fight on a card
with Paul,
Serrano ( left)
retained her
belts with a
unanimous
decision over
Yamileth
Mercado.