Amanda Serrano kept her featherweight titles on Friday, but she had to work through 12 hard rounds to do it. She beat Lucrecia Anabella Manzur by majority decision at Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula, California, and took another step toward a 50th career victory.
The scorecards told the story of how tight the bout became. Two judges gave Serrano a 116-112 edge, while Judge Martha Tremblay had it 114-114, enough for a majority decision and enough to leave Serrano still one knockout short of the record she wanted.
That outcome mattered because Serrano entered the ring chasing two milestones at once: a 50th win and a 33rd knockout. She had 49 victories and 32 knockouts before Friday, and her last outing in May ended in a two-round stoppage of Cheyenne Hanson in El Paso, Texas. Friday gave her the win, but not the finish.
The closer the fight got to the final bell, the more the scoring split from the pace inside the ring. Manzur kept throwing and landing punches, and that pressure was visible enough that Corey Erdman said observers would wonder where eight rounds for Serrano came from. Christina Poncher said the more defining moments belonged to Manzur, and Raul Marquez warned in the seventh that Serrano's corner might have to think about stopping the fight if the hard shots kept coming.
That is what made the final read so stark. Serrano stayed upright through 12 rounds against an opponent who had never gone beyond 10 rounds in a 19-fight career, then won on the cards anyway. The judges who gave her the fight saw enough in her cleaner work, or in her ability to answer back, to separate her from the volume Manzur produced.
Serrano said afterward that the younger fighters are getting stronger and that she is almost getting out of the game, then added that she has one more fight. If she does not get the knockout record, she said she will be glad to be tied with Christy Martin. That leaves one last bout hanging over a career already marked by titles, wins and pressure that followed her all the way to the final bell.
