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Claressa Shields lands a left hook throughout her decisive victory over Marie Eve Dicaire in March. Shields, a extremely embellished boxer, is coming into the MMA ranks. (Carlos Osorio/AP File)
Claressa Shields is as bold as she is gifted, however her ambitions should not merely for herself.
She fights for equality in alternative and compensation. She fights for the disrespected and under-appreciated. She fights for her beloved hometown of Flint, Michigan.
Shields, an Olympic {and professional} boxing champion, is scheduled to make her blended martial arts debut on Thursday – placing on show the talents she’s acquired and the technique she’s discovered whereas coaching in Albuquerque at Jackson-Wink MMA.
Every week earlier than the combat, the primary installment of a four-part Shields documentary appeared on espn+. Throughout these 24 minutes, she explains why she’s pursuing a singular purpose: to grow to be a boxing and an MMA world champion on the identical time, one thing no different fighter – man or girl – has finished.
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“There’s no different boxer that’s achieved greater than me,” she says on the documentary’s outset, “However I simply need a lot extra for myself and my profession. I’ve an ideal alternative proper now, and I’m gonna use my youth (she’s 26) to the most effective of my capacity to be nice at MMA, be nice at boxing. I can do each.”
Within the documentary, there’s appreciable footage of Shields coaching at Jackson-Wink with coaches Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn and with fellow boxer-turned-MMA fighter Holly Holm – who has held titles in each sports activities however not on the identical time.
The ESPN piece follows Shields from Albuquerque to Hollywood, Florida, the place she labored with veteran coach John David Jackson for her March 5 tremendous welterweight boxing title-unification combat in Flint in opposition to Canada’s Marie Eve Dicaire.
It offers at some size with Flint, a metropolis whose already-depressed financial system took a tragic hit when its water provide turned poisonous in 2014.
“I nonetheless put on my hair blue for the fights,” Shields says, “and that’s to carry consciousness to the Flint water disaster. I instructed my metropolis that I’d put on my hair blue till the water was clear.”
Then, after her lopsided victory over Dicaire in Flint, it’s again to Albuquerque to arrange for her MMA debut on a Skilled Fighters League card in opposition to Brittney Elkin, a Wyoming native with a 3-6 document.
Shields makes it clear within the ESPN piece that she believes she will be able to accomplish something she undertakes. However ESPN enlisted former UFC fighter {and professional} contrarian Chael Sonnen for the aim of stability.
In coaching at Jackson-Wink, Sonnen – whose document features a loss by first-round TKO to J-W star Jon Jones – acknowledges that Shields has come to the best place.
However, of her quest to carry boxing and MMA world titles concurrently, Sonnen says flatly, “It’s not going to work.”
Why not? Properly, there are certainly some obstacles.
Not like Holm, who was a kick-boxer earlier than she turned a boxer, Shields got here to MMA coaching armed solely along with her boxing expertise – as spectacular as they’re. Says Sonnen: “The educational curve could be very huge. As an entire, the instruments of boxing are the one least efficient in all of MMA.”
Shields’ boxing expertise needs to be sufficient in opposition to Elkin, who in movies of her fights has proven nice susceptibility to punches and little protection in opposition to them. Nonetheless, it could possibly be fascinating to see whether or not Elkin, a jiujitsu brown belt and an skilled grappler, can get inside Shields’ flashing fists and put Shields’ again to the cage and even take her to the bottom.
I actually wouldn’t wager in opposition to Shields, even in mild of the good-looking payday a wager on Elkin would produce, ought to she win as a 4½-to-1 underdog.
As for Shields’ lengthy sport, an MMA skilled title, it seems she’d ultimately should take care of PFL champion and Olympic judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison, who’s 9-0 within the cage and defeated Elkin by first-round submission (arm bar) in 2018. The PFL basically is Shields’ solely avenue for now, since neither the UFC nor Bellator helps the 155-pound light-weight class during which she competes.
Shields, 75-1 as a boxer within the novice {and professional} ranks, the one loss 9 years in her rear-view mirror, harbors little doubt.
“The world is on the point of see that Claressa Shields can do no matter she places her thoughts to,” she says. “Individuals say that boxers can’t come over to MMA and do properly.
“They’re gonna study their lesson.”
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