A mix of Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather, Claressa Shields ready for the spotlight
The two-time Olympic gold medalist will be the first woman to headline a card on premium TV
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5 min read
If there’s pressure that comes with being the face of women’s boxing just one fight into her professional career, two-time Olympic gold medalist Claressa Shields has no plans to shoulder any of it.
There’s a calm awareness that Shields (1-0) exudes about her role within the sport that belies her 21 years of age. There isn’t so much a need for Shields to project or amplify her naturally confident and charismatic personality as much as there is to just be herself and let it go.
“Twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, I am who I am,” Shields told CBS Sports. “I don’t change because of cameras or because of who is talking to me. I am a person of honesty, and I can be a little blunt sometimes, so I feel like the people should know the real me and the realness of the sport. I don’t feel an obligation to be somebody that I’m not.”
Shields, a native of Flint, Michigan, has enjoyed an amateur career that was filled with firsts. She captured gold at the 2012 London games in the first year of women’s boxing at the Olympics. Four years later in Rio, she became the first American boxer, male or female, to win multiple gold medals.
On Friday, Shields will once again add her name to the history books when she becomes the first female to headline a boxing card on premium television. Shields will face Szilvia Szabados (15-8, 6 KOs) in a six-round middleweight bout in the main event of a “ShoBox: The New Generation” card on Showtime.
Shields, who will fight as a professional for the second straight time close to home at the MGM Grand Detroit, admits the news “most definitely” came as a surprise.
“I’m a person who likes to time my life out and when you think about Showtime, I thought maybe end of the year,” Shields said. “All of a sudden it’s my second fight. I was super excited and I was shocked. I thought that we would get a call in a few days saying, ‘Hey, we decided to have someone else in the main event.’”
The call never came. In fact, Gordon Hall, the executive producer of ShoBox, believes Shields is a perfect fighter for the series.
“’ShoBox: The New Generation’ is about featuring top prospects in tough matchups, and you won’t find a more highly regarded prospect than Claressa Shields,” Hall said. “Male or female, Claressa’s credentials speak for themselves. This is a good test for her in the main event and she looks to take the next step in her career.”
Shields, who outpointed Franchon Crews over four rounds in her pro debut in November, isn’t concerned at the experience disadvantage she faces against Szabados, a native of Hungary. In fact, Shields, who is nicknamed “T-Rex,” was just happy to land a quality opponent.
“It has been a weird process, actually, with me getting fights,” Shields said. “There are a lot of women that box, but the women that have good names, they just don’t want to fight me. I feel like they want more time to get prepared, they want more money.
“If you want to be the best and you want to get paid, you are going to have to fight against me because I’m going to be the one at the top. You are going to have to face fights to get certain rankings and things like that, so they won’t be able to turn me down forever.”
While Shields has seen tape of Szabados, she considers herself different in the fact that she doesn’t train focused on how to defeat other fighters. Instead, she prepares as if she’s fighting herself.
With a platform on Friday to showcase her talents to a portion of the boxing audience who may have not yet seen her fight, Shields describes her style as a mixture of Mike Tyson, Joe Louis, “Sugar” Ray Robinson and Floyd Mayweather. She also admits that in order for her to be successful, there needs to be a split-personality of sorts that she can toggle.
For as sweet and playful as she describes herself outside the ring, all of that changes once Shields steps through the ropes.
“I’m kind of like a monster,” Shields said. “Inside the ring, it’s business. That’s just how I am.”
And it’s the business of boxing where Shields feels she has learned the most from her times interacting with the former face of the sport, retired unbeaten champion Laila Ali. While Shields admits she never followed Ali’s advice to stick around for as many Olympic games as possible, she made sure to take notes in other areas.
“She told me, ‘Build your brand and have a good team behind you of people you trust, who understand you and what you stand for,’” Shields said. “She told me to have a good brand and make sure that it represents what I care about. With that, it’s like an image thing.”
Ali (24-0, 21 KOs), 39, an accomplished author and television personality, hasn’t fought since 2007. But she has made sure to inspire Shields to be a joy to others and always retain her feminine side in a world that is looked upon as “a man sport.”
“I didn’t watch her fights for the first time until when I was 15,” Shields said. “I kind of just watched to compare us as fighters because I had heard so much about her. I looked her up and she was a pretty good fighter, I will say that. But I follow her more now, if that makes sense. She has the cooking thing going on and is in a lot of TV shows and magazines. She’s great at all that stuff.”
Despite the attention being given her at such an early stage of her career, Shields says she hasn’t had a problem staying grounded.
“I still have a lot of goals to accomplish,” Shields said. “To everyone else, this is the best thing that has ever happened to women’s boxing. This is where women’s boxing should be. But I know that women’s boxing should be way further ahead than this.
“My goal, overall, is to go down in history as one of the best women’s fighters, to be on the pound-for-pound list and to fight on pay-per-view. But there is still a few more steps that have to be taken. That’s why I’m continuing to just stay the course and stay calm because this isn’t the end, this is just the beginning. I’m just taking it one step at a time.”
