Jake Paul says Katie Taylor’s team told him Amanda Serrano fight should be a draw

Jake Paul feels his fighter did enough to win — or at least avoid a loss — in the biggest fight in the history of women’s boxing.

Amanda Serrano dropped a hotly contested split decision (94-96, 97-93, 96-93) to Katie Taylor at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Saturday following 10 rounds of incredible back-and-forth action. Immediately afterwards, her manager Paul said that he disagreed with the judges and later wrote “Robbed” on Twitter.

Paul was asked to elaborate on that sentiment at the evening’s post-fight press conference, and according to him, even members of Taylor’s team believed that the fight should have been scored a draw.

“I don’t even want to talk about my opinion,” Paul said. “Obviously, I thought that it was at least a draw. But what I’ll say publicly is Eddie [Hearn] and I were sitting there at the end of the fight like, ‘That’s probably a draw.’ Then I’m in the ring before the decision gets announced and Katie’s manager/trainer that was in the corner goes up to me and goes, ‘That’s a draw. That’s a draw.’ So even Katie’s team was like, that’s a draw. Then obviously the judges have it the way they scored it.

“I come back to the locker room, I’m chilling in the back locker room, the girl who sang the Irish national anthem comes up to me, is like, ‘Hey, can I have a picture? Amanda won that fight by the way, we all know it.’ And she sang the national anthem for Ireland, so screw my opinion, those are three stories right there that everyone says it’s a draw or that Amanda won the fight.”

Serrano came the closest to finishing the fight, landing huge punches on Taylor in Round 5 and prompting judge Guido Cavalleri to award her a 10-8 score for that round (Cavalleri would go on to score the fight for Taylor 96-93). However, the majority of the rounds were close and the activity and movement of Taylor proved to be the deciding factor in the end.

Asked for her thoughts on the scores, Serrano offered a more diplomatic response.

“You know what, I really don’t know,” Serrano said. “I’m in there, of course every fighter is gonna say that they think they won the fight. But I have to sit and watch the fight again. Maybe not, I don’t like to watch my fights. I don’t know. It was a great fight, that’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to put on a great fight to show that women can fight, we can sell.”

She also posted the following celebratory message on social media:

Paul later said that he and opposing promoter Eddie Hearn had discussed a rematch with three-minute rounds as opposed to the standard two-minute rounds for women’s boxing matches.

He added that if Taylor’s team is interested, he is open to having the rematch happen in Taylor’s native Ireland.