5'3 1/2" Laura Serrano, born on October 20, 1967 in Mexico City, is a lawyer and a poet and speaks four languages ... Spanish, Italian, English and Portuguese. This complex lady is also Mexico's most successful and best-known female prizefighter, despite initially being forbidden to compete in her own city by an ordinance that was 20 years older than her. 

A former soccer player, Laura began boxing at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City to lose weight and get in shape.

Like her counterparts in other countries, she decided to move on to competition, and that is where trouble began for her. Not in the ring, where she soon became highly proficient, but outside it.  When Serrano began boxing her father supported her decision but Laura became a boxer only after overcoming her mother's strenuous objections ... according to Serrano, they did not speak to each other for more than a month. None of her four brothers had become a boxer, but despite her mother's objections, Serrano trained as a pro fighter at the Nuevo Jordan gym, a breeding ground for Mexican champions. She was met with disbelief, taunts, and harassment at first, but after showing she was serious and that she would stick to her guns (and constitutional rights) Serrano became one of the gym's success stories. She has sparred with men to prepare for her fights and to prepare them for theirs. Several younger women now train at Nuevo Jordan.

"I had problems with my mom because they didn't want me to study this sport," she said. "I trained in secret. I fought in secret." The men in the gym, including her trainers, were also skeptical about her presence. "It was very difficult because in Mexico the men say this is one of the most vile of all sports," she said. "(The trainers) think that you're looking for a boyfriend," she added. "Only when they begin to see that you're training seriously, with discipline, do they start to respect you."   

Mexico City sports writer Ricardo Castillo, who writes for the English-language paper 'The News', has described Serrano's early career: "For many years Laura had to virtually train in hiding. She could easily pack in a crowd here in Mexico but it's not allowed. She's also had to overcome our famous machismo. It says ... a lot about her sheer guts and iron determination that she's stuck to her guns through thick and thin, and thinner, and fought her way through all this, and she's still here punching. To my mind, she's absolutely the finest woman boxer we've ever had."

Laura's public boxing career began when she went to Las Vegas to fight Christy Martin on the undercard of a Chavez-Randall title bout at the MGM Grand on May 7, 1994.  The result was a controversial six-round draw, in which most observers believed that Serrano was robbed by the judges while Martin moved her record to 21-1-2.

Almost a year later, on the first all-women's boxing card at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on April 20, 1995, Laura TKO'd Ireland's Deirdre Gogarty in the seventh round. Gogarty's jabs and patented left hook were pitted against Serrano's devastating body attack in a war that went six and a half rounds before Gogarty's manager threw in the towel. Gogarty was game to continue the struggle, but her corner saw her starting to take tremendous punishment when Serrano began to get the upper hand. In January 2001, Serrano said that this fight with Gogarty was her most difficult bout. Gogarty fell to 10-4-2 with the loss.

On April 22, 1996 in Tijuana, Mexico, Laura won a six-round decision over Maria de las Nieves Garcia, who fell to 1-1.

On March 29, 1997 at the Hilton in Las Vegas, Laura (127 lbs) scored a third-round TKO of Cheryl Nance (140 lbs) of Columbia, South Carolina, who fell to 2-1.

In March 1998, WBC President Jose Sulaiman thought he had persuaded the Mexico City Sports Commission to allow Laura to fight Isra Girgrah on the undercard of a super lightweight bout between Julio Cesar Chavez and Miguel Gonzalez. This match was scuttled a few days before fight night when the Mexico City authorities exhumed a 1947 law forbidding women to fight professionally. (A match between Christy Martin and Daniella Somers was also scratched from this same card.)  Serrano has still to fight professionally in Mexico City, however. Whistles filled the Plaza México bullring as round-card girls pranced in miniskirts and high heels. On this night of bloodied noses and bruised faces, they were the only women on display. Seated in the third row behind promoter Don King, Laura Serrano, Mexico's best female boxer, could only watch in frustration.  Full Story on Serrano