Amanda Serrano demands respect for all she has done for women’s boxing, a seven-division champion who’s now tied with legend Christy Martin for the most knockouts in the sport’s history.
When featherweight title challenger Cheyenne Hanson of Germany chose to blow a bubble gum bubble at Serrano during the face-off, Serrano viewed it as a disrespectful act.
Saturday night at the sold-out El Paso Civic Center in Texas, Serrano 49-4-1 (32 KOs) made Hanson pay, stopping Hanson by TKO 2 minutes, 25 seconds into the second round.
A Serrano cornerman got tattooed with a “Cayenne” pepper numbered 32 in honor of the event.
“Since Cheyenne blew that bubble in my face, I knew something good would happen,” Serrano said.
In the WBA-WBO title fight that offered three-minute rounds, the left-handed Serrano leaned on her rich vault of experience to jab and toy with Hanson from the start.
“In the first, I was trying to figure [Hanson] out. In the corner, I said, ‘I got her,’” Serrano said.
Dressed in old-school gray “Rocky” shorts, Serrano set up the finish with effective jabs, then hammered her with a relentless combination, cornering Hanson with a nonstop barrage of lefts and rights to the head and body until referee Robert Hoyle stopped the fight.
Afterward, when the sellout crowd jeered promoter Jake Paul, Serrano stood up for him and praised his support of women’s boxing.
With Serrano, no disrespect is allowed.
Earlier, unified middleweight champion Desley Robinson of Australia retained her IBF and WBO belts by out-working and outlanding former 154lbs champion Mary Spencer, 100-90, 100-90,99-91.
Robinson 12-3 impressively closed a slow opening round by backing Spencer 10-4 with a right hand, following with two more clean blows.
Robinson’s jab and hook kept Spencer away, the quickness leaving the more statuesque Spencer to seek to set up power punches.
The hand speed advantage allowed Robinson to score points with the judges.
Spencer unleashed two quality rights to start the fourth, but Robinson pounced for a big right, leading to a barrage that sent Spencer reeling to a corner and holding, glancing at the clock due to the wear.
Robinson’s quickness and activity paced her in the fifth as Spencer’s corner pushed her to match the effort.
Robinson delivered a sharp left in the seventh. Spencer sought to change the narrative by setting up power punches with both hands in the eighth.
That convinced Robinson to attack the ninth with a crushing right as if chasing a knockout, but Spencer then sent back her best right of the night.
Robinson sipped from her boot in victory and will next seek a match with fellow unified champion Kaye Scott.
In a clash of champions to open the main card, Mexico’s WBC junior-flyweight titlist Lourdes Juarez scored a late 10th-round knockdown to clinch a unanimous-decision victory by split-decision scores of 95-94, 94-95, 98-91 over Costa Rica’’s WBC minimumweight champion Yokasta Valle.
The 39-year-old Juarez 40-4 was the aggressor, showcasing her technical skill to steadily land the heavier blows that most impressed judge Douglas Robinson’s widest score.
A hard right by Juarez in the sixth seemed to discourage Valle 34-4.
In the first minute of the 10th, Valle suffered a deep cut by her left eye on an accidental clash of heads, and she was then dropped in the final seconds to seal the victory on judge Esther Lopez’s card.
