Last week, Claressa Shields took Laila Ali to task for saying that she could knock out the two-time Olympic gold medalist.
"Laila Ali is all bark, no bite," Shields told TMZ Sports at the time. "Look — if a girl calls me out, I answer, and I go and fight whoever it is.
"Laila may think that she's big and bad and all that stuff, but when it comes to boxing, there is no woman on this earth that can beat me," Shields continued. "If she wants to fight, I'm all there for it.
"Look — when I beat her, they're going to say that I fought an old Laila Ali," Shields added. "They're not going to say that I beat Laila Ali when she was at her best. But overall, the way she's talking if she's like she's going to knock me out, please ... my defense is too good for her."
Well, Shields has added another name to her hit list.
On Monday afternoon, undisputed women's welterweight champion Cecilia Braekhus tweeted a shot of her hanging out with Ali and jabbed at Shields in the process.
It didn't long for the undisputed women's middleweight and unified junior middleweight champion to respond to Braekhus and double down on Ali.
Shields (10-0, 2 KOs), who defeated Ivana Habazin by unanimous decision to capture the WBC/WBO junior middleweight titles earlier in January, has been vocal in the past about wanting to face Braekhus, telling Sporting News in December 2018 when they competed on the same event that she wants the fight, but it would have to be at 154 pounds, as she said there's no way she could make the welterweight limit of 147.
"One (hundred) fifty-four (pounds)," Shields emphatically said. "People think I'm this belt snatcher, but I don’t want the 147-pound belts. That’s not what I want. She feels like she’s No. 1 pound-for-pound, and I say that I am No. 1 pound-for-pound. And we are close enough in weight that we should meet in a fight and let the fighters decide that. I don’t want the belts. I don’t believe I can make 147 even though my nutritionist believes I can. I believe 154 is the lowest I can go and I would gladly box Cecilia there."
Braekhus (36-0, 9 KOs) also told SN facing Shields is appealing to her, but was adamant she'd have to move down in weight a bit for them to meet.
"Me and Claressa fighting would be huge," Braekhus said. "She would definitely need to move down a bit (in weight)."
Meanwhile, Ali (24-0, 21 KOs) hasn't fought since February 2007 and hasn't shown an inclination of an in-ring return. When asked about Shields in an interview about two weeks ago on SiriusXM's "Sway in the Morning," Ali made it clear she'd have no problem disposing of Shields.
"You want to call yourself the GWOAT (Greatest Woman of All-Time), that's fine," Ali said of Shields. "It's flattering. You look up to my father. We both thought that was cute, that was sweet. But at the same time ... first of all, she could never beat me. Let me just get that really straight right now. We're not even in the same weight class. I know that she walked around heavier, but that would not happen.
"And not simply because she's not strong enough — because I would definitely knock her out — but because she's not talented enough. You're talented, you can box. You can throw those hard punches, but there's a sweet science to boxing. The reason why you have not been able to knock out the opponents that you have already faced, I can totally see it why."