Two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, WBC, IBF, WBA, WBO World Middleweight, WBC, IBF World Super Middleweight, WBO World Light Heavyweight and WBC, WBF World Heavyweight champion Claressa ‘T-Rex’ Shields has won them all.
As an amateur, Shields had an outstanding record of 63-1 with 11 stoppages. As I went down the list of her opponents, only one stood out. That was her only loss in her fifteenth fight to the UK’s Savannah ‘Silent Assassin’ Marshall, 32-7, at the AIBA Women’s World Championship preliminaries in China in May 2012.
In October 2022, they met again. Marshall was 12-0 in Shield’s fourteenth fight, with Shields winning by decision in London.
Shields won Olympic Gold medals in London in 2012 and in Rio in 2016. Quite an accomplishment.
As a pro, she is 15-0 with 3 stoppages, and in her most recent fight over the weekend at Little Ceasars Arena in Detroit, Michigan, she would add another world title.
For Shields, a native of Flint, Michigan, it was a coming home event for her. She entered the arena in an evening dress fit for a queen. When she later was introduced the ring it was like the atmosphere of a carnival show.
Within six minutes, she would capture both light heavyweight and heavyweight belts, destroying champion Vanessa ‘Vany’ Le-Page-Joanisse, though, with only eight fights, 7-1 with 2 stoppages, she was making her first defense. She came down from her hometown of Saint Andre Avellin, Quebec, Canada. With only a limited three amateur bouts per www.boxrec.com
This 29 year-old Le-Page-Joanisse had captured her heavyweight title in her previous fight winning the vacant title WBC Heavyweight title by split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, 10-1 with 4 stoppages, a former South American Super Welterweight champion who was defeated in a world title fight at that weight. In her previous fight for the world title her opponent’s record was 0-3-3. You wonder how she ever qualified.
Could Shields compete with Lucia Ryker, 17-0, from the Netherlands, whose career ended with an injury? Or against the hard-punching Anne Wolfe, 24-1 with 16 stoppages? How about the daughter of Muhammad Ali, Laila ‘She Bee Stingin’ Ali, 24-0 with 21 stoppages?
Getting back to that one fight this writer remembers covering in April of 2019 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Shields was 8-0, and her opponent, WBC and WBO Middleweight champion Christina Hammer, had a limited half dozen amateur fights but as a pro, 24-0, from Kazakhstan living in Dortmund, Germany. She won world titles in WBC, WBO in middleweight, and WBO in super middleweight.
I remember getting a picture with her prior to the fight wearing my GGG Golovkin t-shirt. When she saw it, she smiled, being from the same country in KAZ.
In covering the fight between Shields and Hammer, I wasn’t pleased to see that the referee was Sparkle Lee from New Jersey. I was surprised Hammer’s promoter Tom Loeffler, who also worked with GGG, didn’t question this.
In covering the fight, I watched from the very first round through the tenth that every time Hammer mounted an offensive attack, Lee stepped in and halted it. Round after round, this went on. Under these circumstances, it was no wonder that when the decision was announced in favor of Shields 98-92 and 98-91 twice, I knew I had to go to Hammer’s dressing room afterward.
Upon entering the dressing room, I gave my opinion to promoter Loeffler, and he insisted I do not speak to Hammer about this. A woman was crying, sitting next to Hammer. When Loeffler left, I told Hammer what I saw and felt, saying, “You are still the champ!” She nodded as if in agreement, and I left.
Since then, Hammer has only had four fights against limited opposition, with the last in May of 2022, the last three moving up to super middleweight, all in Germany. At 28-1 with 13 stoppages, the now 34-year-old Hammer is just a memory.
I have always wondered if that fight ever ‘haunt’s Shields. It haunts me and most likely Hammer.
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