Katie Taylor revels in ‘best night of career’ after historic win over Serrano

The wry grin pasted across Katie Taylor’s bruised, swollen face told the whole story. Ireland’s greatest athlete had just navigated the deepest waters of her career to roar back from near-defeat and retain her undisputed lightweight championship with a split-decision win over Amanda Serrano, a heart-stopping affair before a sold-out crowd of 19,187 rollicking spectators that Taylor described as a “career-defining performance”.

“I had to dig deep in there tonight,” Taylor told reporters early Sunday morning in the bowels of Madison Square Garden. “This is a special, special moment. The best night of my career for sure. I wasn’t sure if anything could reach my Olympic gold medal moment, but tonight was absolutely the best moment of my career.”

Through the opening rounds Taylor relied on her superior hand and foot speed to ward off the heavy-handed Serrano’s unsparing pressure, opening an early lead while boxing beautifully off the back foot. But Serrano hurt Taylor badly after finally cornering her elusive foe early in the fifth, leaving the champion bloodied, seemingly exhausted and fortunate to escape the round.

“I think I was boxing very, very well in the early rounds and I just got stuck in a fight her,” Taylor said. “I think the courage and the strength comes back in those moments just purely from the hard work that I put in in training camp over the last few months. It’s in those moments that the hard work of training pays off. I don’t just show courage on fight night. I show courage every single day in training, day after day after day. That’s exactly why you train hard, for those moments when you actually are in the trenches.”

From there Taylor delivered the finishing kick of a champion, winning the final three