During the inaugural press conference for Claressa Shields vs. Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse last month, Shields firmly vowed: “For the sport of women’s boxing, I will go miles and miles and miles to prove that we deserve equality, we deserve equal pay, equal opportunities and equal fight venues.”
Ahead of challenging for Joanisse’s WBC heavyweight championship on Saturday night, live on DAZN, Shields spoke with DAZN News in an exclusive interview about what it will take for women’s boxing to achieve that equality, equal pay, equal opportunities and equal fight venues — and overall continue to grow.
“It’s really about the fans, our brand and it’s about the promotion put behind us,” Shields began explaining. “I think if we have all those in order, if there’s a woman who has a great brand, a woman who has great fans and filling up arenas, I think that all those things can come.
“I’m doing it, Amanda Serrano is doing it, Katie Taylor is doing it to where we can sell out venues and have the fans come.”
She added: “For us to be like ‘you know what? We deserve to fight at T-Mobile Arena,’ we can only say that we deserve that if we can sell out venues that are 18,000 and 19,000 people.”
Taylor and Serrano packed just north of 19,000 fans in a sold-out Madison Square Garden for their thrilling April 2022 fight to help the cause. Serrano's alignment with Jake Paul's Most Valuable Promotions has amplified her fighting profile and purse. Shields pulled roughly 12,000 people in attendance at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan, where fans flocked to see her deliver a unanimous decision over Maricela Cornejo in June 2023. The “GWOAT” (Greatest Woman of All Time) is aiming for 19,000 fans to fill up the same venue and watch her fight Joannise this weekend.
“I’m hoping that it happens,” Shields said of reaching that target attendance. “I got the promotion, I got the opportunity, now it’s about getting the fans exciting and interested to where they come put their butts in seats.”
She tacked on: “I’m telling everybody who supports me, the best way to support me and prove that women’s boxing deserves everything … if you guys want me to fight at T-Mobile Arena and Madison Square Garden and these big venues, we have to show them that we can pack out a venue that’s not as big.
“So when I go and do my negotiations, I can be like ‘hey, I deserve to fight at T-Mobile Arena not because I’m a two-time Olympic champ and I got 13, 14 world titles and I’m undisputed … it’s because hey, the people are going to show up and the world wants to see me.’”
The other component to that is persistence, especially toward equal pay, which the reigning undisputed middleweight world champion believes can be achieved through a two-pronged approach of support and presenting facts.
“All we can do is get behind each other and making sure we’re keeping track of the actual paperwork and facts because a lot of these networks and companies, they’re giving their opinion of things,” Shields offered. “I was told I wasn’t a big enough star to be pay-per-view and I didn’t have enough followers to fight on cards or I didn’t have enough viewership.”
It’s part of the struggle that prompted Shields and her team to take stats into their own hands.
“My viewership was way more than Adrien Broner’s viewership watching,” she said. “I heard they paid Adrien $2 million but they’re paying me at the time $250K. I’m like ‘how does that make sense and I get more viewership than him, I’m putting butts in seats? So he’s getting paid more because he has more followers on social media?’ It doesn’t make sense.
“When I start comparing notes and actually coming back to these networks, then they’re like ‘oh, wow, we didn’t realize.’ I’m like ‘no, you didn’t realize because you didn’t do your research,’” she continued.
The purse difference in boxing is part of what led Shields to signing with the PFL last summer on a multi-year deal for mixed martial arts fights. In addition, the pay difference between men and women in boxing and sports overall is only a microcosm of society’s gender wage gap which has women earning an average of 84 cents to every dollar a man makes in the United States in 2024, as reported by Forbes .
But that isn’t stopping Shields from punching forward — not only for herself, but women’s boxing, period. Along those lines, she recently started her own T-Rex Promotions company to ensure that the next batch of women’s boxers shine bright for years to come.
“We can’t let people tell us ‘oh, you can’t do this, you can’t do that because women have never done this, women have never done that,’” Shields asserted. “I’ve been told by a network, 'a woman has never made a $1 million and she’s never going to make a $1 million' and I’m looking at them like ‘well, it looks like I’m going to have to go to another network because I’m going to make $1 million.’”
Shields added: “You have to know your value and keep building toward that value to prove to others that you’re worth that. It wasn’t easy and I’ve had my challenges but now I have a great brand, I have a great promotion and now it’s all about getting the fans involved and getting butts in seats.”
Live on DAZN: Claressa Shields vs. Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse. Click here for details.