Amanda Serrano beats Erika Cruz in unanimous decision win

Amanda Serrano defeated Erika Cruz via unanimous decision (97-93, 98-92, 98-92) to become the Undisputed Women’s Featherweight World Champion on Saturday, February 4, at the Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden, New York City.

Serrano came into the fight as the WBC, WBO, IBF and IBO Featherweight Champion. Adding Cruz’s WBA featherweight title was the final piece of the puzzle in the Puerto Rican’s quest to become the undisputed champion.

Serrano is now the first-ever undisputed champion from Puerto Rico in boxing history. ‘The Real Deal’ spoke of the fight in an emotional post-fight interview, where she said:

"I’m just so emotional underneath, I finally did it for my island. (Cruz is) a Mexican champion and we knew that from the beginning. That's what we expected and that's what we trained for. I didn’t expect anything less than that.

Amanda Serrano also spoke of the achievement of being the first from her country to become an undisputed champion:

"So now I am one of the undisputed champions but I am still the only seven-weight-class world champion in the world”.

Check out the full post-fight interview below:

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Amanda Serrano vs. Erika Cruz: as it happened

Serrano v Cruz

Both fighters stepped into the center of the ring to make this fight an absolute war. Cruz swarmed Serrano at the start and looked like she could come away with the victory, until the latter came back with a vengeance in the later rounds.

Cruz executed her strategy of landing some hard body shots to gas out the New York native, looking to tire out her opponent. Around round six, Cruz started to fade after throwing power punches round after round. Serrano sensed the fatigue in her opponent and landed some huge shots to the face of Cruz, who never really seemed to recover from the onslaught.

In the earlier rounds, Cruz was hit with an unintentional headbutt and this opened up a huge cut on the Mexican’s face. This same cut only worsened in the later rounds as Serrano landed more and more counterpunches.

The Puerto Rican champion cruised through the final rounds, with both fighters engaging in an all-out brawl in the final few seconds to the delight of the crowd, who applauded and cheered on both warriors.

Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano 2 was announced shortly after the featherweight champion was declared victorious, and the rematch will take place on May 20 in Dublin, Ireland.

Check out the fight highlights below: