Two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, WBC, IBF, WBA, WBO World Middleweight, WBC, IBF World Tremendous Middleweight, WBO World Mild Heavyweight and WBC, WBF World Heavyweight champion Claressa ‘T-Rex’ Shields has received all of them.
As an beginner, Shields had an impressive report of 63-1 with 11 stoppages. As I went down the record of her opponents, just one stood out. That was her solely loss in her fifteenth combat to the UK’s Savannah ‘Silent Murderer’ Marshall, 32-7, on the AIBA Ladies’s World Championship preliminaries in China in Might 2012.
In October 2022, they met once more. Marshall was 12-0 in Protect’s fourteenth combat, with Shields profitable by determination in London.
Shields received Olympic Gold medals in London in 2012 and in Rio in 2016. Fairly an accomplishment.
As a professional, she is 15-0 with 3 stoppages, and in her most up-to-date combat over the weekend at Little Ceasars Enviornment in Detroit, Michigan, she would add one other world title.
For Shields, a local of Flint, Michigan, it was a coming residence occasion for her. She entered the sector in a night gown match for a queen. When she later was launched the ring it was just like the environment of a carnival present.
Inside six minutes, she would seize each gentle heavyweight and heavyweight belts, destroying champion Vanessa ‘Vany’ Le-Web page-Joanisse, although, with solely eight fights, 7-1 with 2 stoppages, she was making her first protection. She got here down from her hometown of Saint Andre Avellin, Quebec, Canada. With solely a restricted three beginner bouts per www.boxrec.com
This 29 year-old Le-Web page-Joanisse had captured her heavyweight title in her earlier combat profitable the vacant title WBC Heavyweight title by cut up determination over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, 10-1 with 4 stoppages, a former South American Tremendous Welterweight champion who was defeated in a world title combat at that weight. In her earlier combat for the world title her opponent’s report was 0-3-3. You surprise how she ever certified.
May Shields compete with Lucia Ryker, 17-0, from the Netherlands, whose profession ended with an harm? Or in opposition to the hard-punching Anne Wolfe, 24-1 with 16 stoppages? How in regards to the daughter of Muhammad Ali, Laila ‘She Bee Stingin’ Ali, 24-0 with 21 stoppages?
Getting again to that one combat this author remembers protecting in April of 2019 in Atlantic Metropolis, New Jersey. Shields was 8-0, and her opponent, WBC and WBO Middleweight champion Christina Hammer, had a restricted half dozen beginner fights however as a professional, 24-0, from Kazakhstan dwelling in Dortmund, Germany. She received world titles in WBC, WBO in middleweight, and WBO in tremendous middleweight.
I bear in mind getting an image along with her previous to the combat carrying my GGG Golovkin t-shirt. When she noticed it, she smiled, being from the identical nation in KAZ.
In protecting the combat between Shields and Hammer, I wasn’t happy to see that the referee was Sparkle Lee from New Jersey. I used to be stunned Hammer’s promoter Tom Loeffler, who additionally labored with GGG, didn’t query this.
In protecting the combat, I watched from the very first spherical by the tenth that each time Hammer mounted an offensive assault, Lee stepped in and halted it. Spherical after spherical, this went on. Beneath these circumstances, it was no surprise that when the choice was introduced in favor of Shields 98-92 and 98-91 twice, I knew I needed to go to Hammer’s dressing room afterward.
Upon coming into the dressing room, I gave my opinion to promoter Loeffler, and he insisted I don’t communicate to Hammer about this. A lady was crying, sitting subsequent to Hammer. When Loeffler left, I instructed Hammer what I noticed and felt, saying, “You’re nonetheless the champ!” She nodded as if in settlement, and I left.
Since then, Hammer has solely had 4 fights in opposition to restricted opposition, with the final in Might of 2022, the final three shifting as much as tremendous middleweight, all in Germany. At 28-1 with 13 stoppages, the now 34-year-old Hammer is only a reminiscence.
I’ve at all times questioned if that combat ever ‘hang-out’s Shields. It haunts me and more than likely Hammer.
