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Brooklyn-based Cindy “Checkmate”
Serrano (15-3-2, 7 KOs) had her
first shot at a world
championship in 2005 when she
fought to a draw with Rhonda
Luna for the vacant WIBA
Featherweight crown. Almost six
years later she will get a
second chance, as she travels to
France to take on hard-punching
reigning World Boxing Federation
(WBF) Women’s Welterweight World
Champion Anne Sophie Mathis
(24-1, 21 KOs) on October 1.
That December night back in 2005
at the Turning Stone Casino in
Verona, New York, Serrano’s 16
year old younger sister Amanda
was sitting at ringside. Amanda
since started her own boxing
career, and became a world
champion earlier this month when
she won the IBF Super
Featherweight title.
While happy
for her sibling’s success, Cindy
obviously doesn’t want to take a
backseat to her kid sister. With
that in mind, Serrano has worked
vigorously with trainer Jordan
Maldonado at Glendale Boxing
Club in Queens, N.Y., and
believes they have come up with
the right strategy to beat
Mathis, even in the champion’s
home country.
However, it
will be a very tough assignment
for the 29-year-old Puerto
Rican-American. Anne Sophie
Mathis has only tasted defeat
once as a professional, and that
was almost six years ago and in
her second bout. In 1995 Mathis
was overwhelmed by the more
experienced and undefeated
Marischa Sjauw, who later went
on to win multiple world
titles.
Eleven
victories later Mathis won the
WBA World Light Welterweight
title, along with the EBU
European crown, in an all-French
super-fight against current WBF
World Light Welterweight champ
Myriam Lamare, stopping her then
undefeated countryman in seven
rounds. Six months later she
beat Lamare again in a rematch,
this time by a close majority
decision in a defense of the WBA
belt.
In 2008
Mathis added the WBC and WIBF
titles by defeating Panamanian
Ana Pascal. She defended the WBA
trinket once more later that
year, before taking 2009 off and
moving up to welterweight. In
April 2011 she captured the WBO
European championship in a
tune-up towards winning the WBF
and WIBA Welterweight World
titles in June with a stoppage
over Switzerland’s Olivia
Boudouma.
Against Serrano,
Mathis will be making her first
WBF World title defense, and at
34 years of age she is fighting
better than ever and appears to
have many years as champion left
in her. Cindy Serrano is however
coming to cut her reign short,
become her family’s second world
champion, and ruin plans for a
welterweight super-fight that
Mathis has lined up against
Holly Holm in the USA in
December. |
