Amanda Serrano- Tag

Early life and introduction to boxing

Amanda Serrano is a Puerto Rican boxer and mixed martial artist. She was born (October 9, 1988) in the municipality of Carolina in Puerto Rico. Her varied skills also include being a professional wrestler too. Since March 2021, she has been the IBO champion. Her champion streak stops not only there. She has been the WBO champion since 2019. The list only gets bigger with some impressive facts about her champion attitude.

Amanda holds the Guinness World Record for winning the most boxing world championships in different classes. Moreover, She is the first woman to have won the Super World Championship. In 2016 and 2018, WBO declared her as the ‘Female Boxer of the Year’. As per The Ring and BoxRec, Amanda Serrano is the most active featherweight fighter. Besides, she was also ranked as the third-most active female fighter as per ESPN.

When she was young, the family moved to New York and joined the large Puerto Rican diaspora there (colloquially known as Nuyoricans). Surrounded by this community, she grew up in an oasis of Puerto Rican culture in which traditional food and salsa music were predominant. Her upbringing was reflected in the manner in which she speaks Spanish, in a dialect with a distinct accent often attributed to that population, and her ability to fluidly speak English. The family lived in Brooklyn, where she continued to live well into adulthood. During her youth she was an active child, with a distinct passion for swimming. After her sister began boxing training intending to lose weight by attending the gym of her husband Jordan Maldonado, the 12-year old Serrano accompanied her there. She continued frequenting the facility and eventually got her first job there.

Initially Serrano was not as interested in the sport, not even attending a family event to watch the Oscar De La Hoya vs. Félix Trinidad fight, but she was an avid follower of Cindy’s career and developed a passion for it as she grew older. When she graduated from Bushwick High School (located in Bushwick, Brooklyn and closed in 2006) at the age of 17, she decided to begin training as a method to buy things and bond with her sister. Her father supported her decision, but her mother was hesitant until she began earning success and saw it as a way for the elder sister to retire after having her second child. Cindy, knowing that she had already been frustrated during a previous sparring session against a boy, intended to dissuade her by stepping into the ring but the younger sister proved that she could defend herself competently. Admittedly shy, Serrano choose to continue in Maldonado’s small gym in Queens with him as trainer, so that the flow of people was controlled and she could focus on her training. Serrano’s amateur career was brief and concluded with a record of only 9–1, but she won the Staten Island amateur championship in 2008. From there she competed in the featherweight division of the New York Daily News Golden Gloves, where she defeated Glenyss Puentevella by referee stopping contest (RSC, the International Boxing Association’s equivalent of a technical knockout) in the semifinal and decisioned USA Boxing’s national champion Jody-Ann Weller in the final.

But according to her, she moved from Puerto Rico to New York when she was young. She grew up in the Puerto Rican community in the US.

She was very much interested in swimming at an early age but later started training for fights later. Her father always supported her decision to fight but her mom started to support her after some time.