Claressa Shields is keen about making boxing history with every one of her moves. You can be rest assured of that.
On Tuesday, it was announced that the two-time Olympic gold medalist and reigning undisputed middleweight champion of the world will face former world champion Ivana Habazin on Oct. 5, for the vacant WBO women's junior middleweight title at the Dort Federal Event Center in Shields' hometown of Flint, Mich.
The fight was originally slated for Aug. 17, but Shields had to postpone it after tweaking her knee — a minor injury that has healed since. A win and the 24-year-old Shields (9-0, 2 KOs) would become the quickest boxer in the sport’s history — male or female — to become a three-division world champion.
And that’s the part of this equation that makes Shields beam, as she’s getting the chance to further cement her self-proclaimed “Greatest Woman of All Time (GWOAT)” moniker.
“I just know that I want to fight the best and that I want to continue to make history,” Shields says. “Once I’m done boxing, I want people to be able to say ‘She was one of the greatest fighters of all time or I am greatest women’s fighter of all time.’”
Adding a chapter to her boxing history is something that Shields and her team actively pursued when it came to making this fight with Habazin.
“(Vasyl) Lomachenko got his third-division (title) in his 12 fight,” Shields' manager Mark Taffet said. “Claressa is going for the same accomplishment in her 10 fight, so she wants to make history and do that. She’s just checking off everything that’s possible to go down as the Greatest Woman of All Time in boxing.”
Then, there’s considering how Shields is going about doing it.
Typically, when a boxer becomes a multiple-weight champion, he or she does it by moving up in weight. Shields is doing the opposite.
“Claressa started professional boxing at 168 pounds. Not only is she going to win her third weight title, she’s the only person to ever do it by going down in weight every time,” Taffet boasts of what's to come in October. “She was the 168-pound champion, the undisputed 160-pound champion and now she’s going to be the 154-pound champion.
“So, Claressa is showing she’s willing to make the commitment that an athlete of her stature and capabilities should make to create history.”
Like Shields’ last opponent, Christina Hammer, Habazin (20-3, 7 KOs) will be competing in the United States for the first time, bringing nearly triple the amount of experience than “T-Rex” into the ring.
Hammer's experience edge over Shields didn’t stop the latter from pounding her way to a unanimous decision to become just the second woman in boxing history to be crowned an undisputed champion. Cecilia Braekhus was the first and Katie Taylor recently became the third.
Entering that fight against Hammer, Shields heard the naysayers’ chatter.
“‘I don’t have enough experience or I’m not good enough and she’s bigger, she’s stronger,’” Shields said. “To hear people say that, that’s how mentally strong I was to keep my head down in camp and grind in knowing that I was doing everything right to get the victory.”
She’s likely to handle any criticism during this promotion with the Croatian Habazin the same way.
If successful, perhaps Shields will go back to trying to make an undisputed vs. undisputed championship fight against Braekhus or make good on trying to sign a two-fight contract with UFC double champion Amanda Nunes. The “GWOAT” has said that she’d be willing to fight Nunes in both a boxing and MMA match.
“We’re going to clash one day,” she promised.
Until then, her charge toward more boxing history continues.