Why Combate Americas’ world record holding boxer Amanda Serrano prefers MMA

Amanda Serrano is the only woman to have won world boxing titles in six different divisions, and boasts a 36-1-1 record. She made her MMA debut at Combate Estrellas 1 on April 13, securing a draw vs. Corina Herrera. On Saturday night she fights Mexico’s Erendira Ordonez at the DAZN-streamed Combate Americas: Mexico vs. USA in Tucson, Arizona. In an interview with James Lynch, Serrano said Combate Americas has been much better than boxing was.

So many years and so many accomplishments in the sport of boxing and I have gotten pretty much nothing,” said Serrano, as transcribed by Amy Kaplan for FanSided. “My pay sucks. I’m a six-time world champion, only the third person to do so and I’m still getting treated like I am a beginner. There was frustration from broken promises from promoters and the networks. In MMA they treat me so well. [Combate Americas] treats me so well, I’m getting paid more than I got paid for my last fight. I’m looking at it from a different picture, I’m getting so much respect and I’m getting more exposure.

Right now in boxing, it’s only the big fights for me. Someday I’d love to beat my own record and become a seventh division world champion but for now there’s so much ground I need to cover in MMA so that’s where my focus is.

In MMA they respect the females a lot more than they do in boxing. It’s about time, I have been boxing for 11 years and I have only been fighting MMA for half a year and I’ve already gotten so much more than in boxing.

MMA is a newer sport, boxing has been around a lot longer. Boxing fans are a little more set in their ways, old school. They are stuck on the same thing, men should be fighting, women shouldn’t be. Ronda Rousey helped a lot, not just for women’s MMA but for women’s combats sports as a whole. After she came along, she opened doors. Female boxing changed a little bit after that, but it didn’t change as much as it did in MMA. In MMA you see multiple female fights on TV, but in boxing, they are almost never on TV, no one ever gets to see them. You have to show them, even if they don’t want to see it because they’ll watch and eventually like it when they see we can fight.

So what will happen on Saturday night?

I definitely want to see a nice knockout, she said. But I don’t like to make predictions anymore because especially in MMA you never know.