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Lewis Ritson faces Jeremias Ponce in an excellent light-weight title bout on Saturday, June 12, 2021 (6/12/21) at Vertu Motors Enviornment in Newcastle, England.
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Right here’s what it’s essential to know:
What: Boxing
Essential Occasion: Devin Haney vs. Jorge Linares
When: Saturday, June 12, 2021
The place: Vertu Motors Enviornment
Essential Card Time: 2 p.m. EDT; essential occasion roughly 5 p.m. ET
TV: N/A
Channel finder: Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, Cox, DIRECTV, Dish, Hulu, fuboTV, Sling.
Dwell stream: DAZN
Struggle Card:
- Lewis Ritson vs. Jeremias Ponce: Eliminator for IBF super-lightweight title
- Cyrus Pattinson vs. Yoncho Markov
- Thomas Patrick Ward vs. Edy Mercado
- Alen Babic vs. Damien Chambers
- Solomon Dacres vs. Alvaro Terrero
- Joe Legal guidelines vs. Nestor Maradiaga
- Ellie Scotney vs. Vanesa Caballero
- April Hunter vs. Klaudia Vigh
***
Claressa Shields has narrowed her walkout music for her MMA debut down to 3 songs. She wants a tune she will dance to on the way in which to the cage, although the gold gladiator costume and her customary entrance theatrics will probably be left behind together with her boxing gloves.
“I really must make extra TikTok movies,” she mentioned, laughing. “I dance on a regular basis. On the fitness center. In between rounds of sparring. I’m at all times doing a little form of dancing. After I stroll out and I’m dancing and singing, that’s how I really feel calm. I can’t stroll out all critical.”
Her temper switched contained in the boxing ring. Shields was fierce, centered, and carried that Flint, Michigan chip together with her all the way in which to 2 Olympic gold medals and championships in three skilled weight lessons.
She was undefeated, unchallenged and conquered boxing because the self-proclaimed GWOAT. Sure, the Biggest Lady Of All Time.
On Thursday, the 26-year-old Shields begins one other try at greatness — simply six months after she began blended martial arts coaching — when she makes her professional debut in a 155-pound combat towards Brittney Elkin within the Skilled Fighters League.
Shields says deliver on the haters who doubt her expertise will translate to MMA.
“What in case your MMA debut goes all incorrect and also you lose? How are you going to really feel,” she says, mocking some reporters’ questions. “Why would you ask me one thing silly like that? Who thinks about shedding?”
Actually not Shields, who went 11-0 over 5 years and have become the quickest fighter in boxing historical past — male or feminine — to turn into a three-division world champion. She took outing of her boxing prime and educated with former UFC champions Jon Jones and Holly Holm, most of her days since December have been spent on the Jackson Wink MMA Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“I let the coaches know proper off the bat, I’m an aggressive individual,” she mentioned in an interview with The Related Press. “No matter any person dishes at me, I can dish it again and I can take it. As soon as they realized that, it was a sport changer for us in camp.”
She knew the right way to use her fingers and largely used pads to work on her kicks. She discovered the intricacies of MMA, like the right way to defend, get off the cage and rebound from takedowns. Hitting the mat isn’t essentially the dying knell it may be in boxing, and Shields had developed her personal particular methods to face again up from the usually inevitable floor combating.
“I simply needed to get snug with being there,” she mentioned. “One I obtained snug being there, it was now not a worry of being taken down. I understand how to rise up.
“Oh, that’s it,” she mentioned, laughing in regards to the expertise.
Make no mistake, Shields has not give up boxing and nonetheless has challengers she’d prefer to combat. She needs a rematch with middleweight champion Savannah Marshall, the final individual to beat her in an beginner bout in 2012. Shields defeated Franchón Crews-Dezurn in her professional debut in 2016 however needs one other bout now that the French fighter holds the tremendous middleweight crown.
Past that, not a lot else appeals to Shields.
“What can be the distinction between being a 12-time world champ and a 20-time world champ in ladies’s boxing? It’s nothing,” she mentioned. “It’s no completely different. I used to be already on the cap of the place I may generate income. I used to be on the cap of what the networks would give me, what they’d permit. The principle factor was, I used to be a essential occasion fighter making a sure sum of money.
“The place’s my pay-per-view alternative? The place is my $1 million payday? Girls’s boxing doesn’t provide the alternative. I simply felt prefer it was unfair to me to place a lot time and vitality into boxing and never be reaping what I’m sowing. All I’ve obtained is a bunch of belts in my drawer. I’ve obtained some cash in my checking account. However it’s not the form of cash I ought to have. I ought to have far more cash.”
Shields saved her cash however by no means commanded even a excessive six-figure payout for a title combat — she says she by no means made greater than $350,000 for one combat, an expert pittance to the form of money earned on the boys’s facet by, say, a YouTuber in an exhibition bout. As a result of ladies’s boxing remains to be a distinct segment sport, she by no means achieved the mainstream fame and fortune of her fellow Olympic friends like Michael Phelps and Simone Biles.
Over the previous decade MMA has been a lot kinder to ladies incomes essential occasion spots and richer paydays. Kayla Harrison, a two-time Olympic judo gold medalist, has emerged because the face of PFL and has a 9-0 file. Ronda Rousey, Amanda Nunes, and Rose Namajunas are among the many ladies that blossomed into essential occasion stars in UFC, with reputation and pay that rivaled or surpassed many male fighters.
Shields mentioned she’s already reaped the advantages of the MMA leap, together with an endorsement take care of a serious headphone firm and obtained an all-access docu-series on ESPN-plus. She additionally signed for performing roles in two upcoming films and is concerned in a deliberate film about her life that has been delayed by the pandemic.
“I haven’t even fought but and all these items is coming to me,” she mentioned. “And there’s going to be extra the extra profitable I’m. While you’re profitable, individuals need to spend money on you. I didn’t get that luxurious in boxing irrespective of how nice I used to be or how dangerous I beat my opponent. I by no means obtained that chance.”
The PFL alternative features a essential occasion spot in Atlantic Metropolis, New Jersey towards Elkin (3-6) on the ESPN2 essential card that begins at 10 p.m. EDT.
“It’s going to be superior for my private expertise and journey,” Elkin mentioned. “I’ve been combating for 12 years and that is positively the largest match I’ve been in.”
Shields hoped to have yet one more MMA combat in August and needs to “squeeze in” two boxing matches this 12 months earlier than deciding if she’ll try to win the PFL title in 2022.
Shields nonetheless needed to resolve on a walkout music days earlier than the combat. However she was clear on her message to doubters that she’ll wrestle in boxing — Shields smiled over a Zoom as she flashed two center fingers.
“I’m not an individual who will let individuals who don’t personally know me get to me,” she mentioned.
However Shields needs the combat world to know she will turn into the following large factor in MMA.
(The Related Press contributed to this report.)
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