NEW YORK — Amanda Serrano shocked the boxing world last week when she took to her Twitter account and announced that “it’s a rap (sic) for my boxing career,” further explaining, “I’m going to concentrate on becoming a full-time MMA fighter.” That tweet, though, has since been deleted.
So, where does the six-division world boxing champion currently stand with her decision? Well, it’s not that Serrano is done with boxing for good, per se. It’s more of a case that despite her in-ring success, the business of boxing and the sport’s lack of pay for women paved the way for her experience with the Sweet Science to sour over the years … to the point that she’s looking elsewhere now and for the foreseeable future.
“It’s like a relationship. I give my all, I give my love and everything I have in me to the sport and I get nothing in return,” Serrano told Sporting News, while sitting on a heavy bag at The Dojo NYC martial arts gym in the Ridgewood section of Queens, New York, during a recent interview. “Why continue on with that relationship? I don’t have to stay in that relationship if I’m not happy. Go elsewhere.”
The decision to solely concentrate on MMA has been in the making for Serrano for quite some time now. She first put boxing on notice by signing in December with the mixed martial arts promotion, Combate Americas. There, in her MMA debut, Serrano fought Corina Herrera to a unanimous draw this past April.
On Saturday (Oct. 13), Serrano will face Eréndira Ordoñez as part of Combate Americas’ Mexico vs. USA card at the AVA Amphitheater at Del Sol in Tucson, Arizona, live on DAZN.
The decision to mash the dash on her MMA career was one triggered by necessity, not preference, according to Serrano. It’s as if boxing forced her hand to do so. The Puerto Rican fighter, who calls Bushwick, Brooklyn home, also turns 30 years old on Tuesday.
“Don’t remind me,” she says, grinning.
Serrano wants to usher in her new decade with change, as if it’s a New Year’s resolution — the kind you make and keep, not do for a while and break.
Last month, she defeated Yamila Esther Reynoso in light welterweight action as part of the Danny Garcia-Shawn Porter undercard to become the first woman six-division world boxing champion. The only other two boxers included in that elite company? Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao.
But while they're on the same page of boxing history, they’re far apart when it comes to tax brackets.
“Because they’re men. I’m the only girl [in that group] and I’m struggling still, living at home and trying to pay a bill,” Serrano said.
That lopsided wage gap between men and women boxers is a big contributing factor in Serrano choosing to concentrate on MMA full-time.
MORE: Katie Taylor, Cindy Serrano praise Ronda Rousey's transition to WWE
When asked about the purse difference between her celebrated boxing career and infant stages of her MMA journey, Serrano broke it down bluntly: “I’ll put it to you this way, my sixth-division boxing world title fight was less than my second MMA fight and first MMA fight.”
Serrano hears her boxing fans clamor for her to face undisputed welterweight champion Cecilia Braekhus at 147 pounds to possibly capture her seventh-division world title. What those same fans don’t see is Serrano having to train clients just to make ends meet. So, it came a point in time where she had to leave the ring and enter the cage, as Serrano tells it.
Six-division world champion Amanda Serrano talks to Sporting News about her decision to put her boxing career on hold for a journey into MMA. pic.twitter.com/vai369wbiC
— Sporting News MMA (@SN Studio_mma) October 9, 2018
“It’s tiring hearing the same thing over and over again — ‘the next fight, the next fight … we’re promising you ‘x’ amount of money or exposure’ and still nothing,” she said. “I’m a six-division world champion and I’m still having to struggle to look for any jobs. It’s just frustrating. What’s next? Even if I get a seventh-division [world championship], what’s going to happen to me? I’m going to become rich overnight?”
She added: “It’s just so hard and frustrating. I make not enough to survive for the whole year [in boxing]. I only fought once this year, and in boxing, and I made a good amount of money. After taxes, after paying my team, after paying for the camp that I had, I had to buy a lot of food to gain the weight (laughs) … it all adds up. By the end of the day, I come home with — if I’m lucky — $11,000, $12,000. It’s not fair. I am a six-division [champion] — one of the most-accomplished women boxers — and I’m still not getting what I deserve. Eleven years of boxing and I’m still in the same position that I was when I made my pro debut. So, it’s sad.”
MORE: Amanda Serrano, Heather Hardy are tired of boxing's gender wage gap
Other women boxers can relate. Heather Hardy also trains clients full-time just to stay afloat. Hardy has long advocated for women’s boxing matches to be televised and is finally getting her wish, as her highly-anticipated rematch with Shelly Vincent at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27 will be televised by HBO. But even then, that’s bittersweet, considering the network is phasing out its boxing altogether. That, and Hardy must segue between boxing and Bellator MMA just to make a living as well.
Hardy expressed some of the pitfalls of going from boxing to the MMA game during a Sporting News feature story last month.
Serrano, too, has found the transition to be grueling and challenging to say the least.
“It’s very difficult. My body has never been so sore. I’ve been boxing for 11 years and I’ve had no injuries, no soreness. I started MMA and my body’s been a whole different level,” Serrano said. “The transition is really hard. I stay in the gym, stay practicing and stay watching MMA. It’s difficult learning all the rules, learning the submissions and transitioning into an MMA fighter and not continuing to think and feel like a boxer. That’s pretty hard. Even my stance, when I stand in boxing, I want less of me to be shown. In MMA, I have to be squared up, I have to be ready to be taken down or for knees and kicks. Right now, it’s hard for me that I’m learning on the job.”
Jordan Maldonado, the longtime trainer of Serrano and her older sister, Cindy Serrano, echoed much of the same sentiment about the challenges of transitioning from boxing to MMA.
“Your boxing stance, in MMA that’s an invitation for a fighter to kick your leg out of spot,” Maldonado said. “When you do boxing for so long, you don’t think about your stance, punches and combinations. These things automatically come out as a reaction — muscle memory. It’s engrained in you. To change that overnight is hard, but it can be done.”
That steep learning curve has Serrano engulfed in muay-Thai training to enhance her striking, in addition to jiu-jitsu and wrestling for ground work. But if there’s anyone who could make the successful transition, it’s seemingly Serrano, who is hell-bent on pouring in her full focus on MMA, distraction-free.
“I live at home — my parents own a home. I don’t have kids, don’t have a phone, don’t have a boyfriend, so I concentrate 100 percent on my career,” Serrano said.
That’s right, she said phone, as in cell phone — the same smart device that most of us would be lost without.
“They’re distractions,” she continues. “One phone call, one argument with your boyfriend and you come to the gym and you’re not all there. You get punched and you get knocked out. I try to eliminate all distractions.”
To go from being a master of your craft to a rookie in another isn’t easy, especially when the former has so many ties to Serrano's life.
After all, this is the same Amanda Serrano who remembers her family huddled around the television to watch Puerto Rican hero, Felix “Tito” Trinidad defeat “The Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya back in September 1999, when she was just 10 years old.
This is the same Amanda Serrano, who cried as a 13-year-old girl sparring against a boy for the first time. The same Amanda Serrano, who watched her sister Cindy first take up boxing as a means to lose weight following the birth of her child, and followed in her footsteps with the Sweet Science. The same Amanda Serrano whose first fight was a loss in the Golden Gloves, but rebounded to rattle off eight straight victories to win the tournament in 2008, before going pro a year later.
And, of course, the same Amanda Serrano, who made history, becoming a six-division world champ.
All those memories aren’t easy to turn the page on. But that’s what Serrano is doing for the moment.
If the pay is considerably better, Serrano is leaving the possibility of facing a Braekhus or Katie Taylor, who will fight her sister Cindy on Oct. 20, open. By then, perhaps she’ll have some new hardware in the form of an MMA world title as well.
“Definitely one of my next goals is to be an MMA champion and boxing world champion at the same time, so hopefully that will come into place,” she said. “But I want to give to MMA what I gave to boxing and hopefully, I’ll go down the same path I did in boxing.”
So, don’t consider this as closing the chapter on boxing permanently. If anything, consider it as Serrano placing a bookmark on the Sweet Science, while advancing in MMA. At least until things in boxing change.
