Claressa Shields dominated again, returning home to Flint, Michigan, to win a broad unanimous decision over Marie-Eve Dicaire, unifying all four belts at 154 pounds and becoming an undisputed 2-8 champion.
Shields (11-0, 2 KO’s) won in a score of 100-90 from all three judges. Bad Left Hook was a little more generous with Dicaire (17-1, 0 KO), which means that we caught her in the ninth round and had 99-91 for Shields.
Shields, 25, looked like he wanted the knockout, but as usual, he never came and never seemed particularly close to happening. But she practically had her way against the 34-year-old Canadian, whose nervous energy never calmed down, and Dicaire failed to build a real rhythm in the fight, with Shields once again just overcoming his opponents.
Shields retained the WBC and WBO titles, added the Dicaire IBF belt, and also took the previously vacant WBA title.
“100-90, I can’t be mad about it. But she kept headbanging me and elbowing me. I was trying to knock out, it was what I wanted, and it almost happened a few times, but we have two minutes, and then we have the referee breaking down when she is holding me and poking me, ”said Shields. “But at the end of the day, I am the undisputed new champion with 154, the first boxer in history to do this, arguably twice.”
Shields plans to make his MMA debut with the PFL, probably in June, but wants to box again this year. She was asked about some fights, first a fight in 147 against the current undisputed 135-pound champion Katie Taylor, which makes, I suppose, some kind of sense.
“Katie Taylor is not the concern, the 147 is. Katie is a great fighter. They have to pay me a lot of money so I can lose my ass and drop to 147, ”joked Shields. “At the end of the day, I am a woman and this is something I love about my body. I don’t have big breasts, but I have a nice butt, and I would miss that going to 147. They need to come with that mass, at least a million. Talk to me well. “
The other question was about his old amateur rival Savannah Marshall, who holds the middleweight title, and Shields was much more excited about it.
“Savannah Marshall cannot fuck with me. Let’s keep it real. Savannah Marshall, you won a lucky decision when we were kids. I was 17. In addition, London was hosting the Olympics. She knows, ”said Shields.
“If you want to explode about you hitting me eight points to 14, come on. So you let me be a champion in three different weight categories and you’re a professional? Make sense. Savannah Marshall knows that she cannot and will never be able to fuck with me. She can come to America, I can go to the UK, we can go to Mexico, wherever Savannah Marshall wants to go, I am going to fuck her. Literally. She knows this.
“She is afraid of me. I have wanted to smoke for years. Savannah Marshall can get him. Tell Eddie Hearn, he came with that $ 250,000 idiot, he better come with $ 500,000, $ 750,000 if he wants me to go over there and smoke his girl. “
Shields-Marshall is probably the fight that makes the most sense, but if Shields can get an offer that she likes, it remains to be seen. Otherwise, it is a little difficult to find out what she is going to do from here on in boxing, because she basically beat everyone who exists to win in the weights that she can comfortably do.
Undercard Results
- Danielle Perkins UD-8 Monika Harrison: These two fought last August, it was not competitive at that time and it was not here. Perkins, 38 (3-0, 1 KO), is now the WBC “silver” heavyweight champion, whatever it is worth, that if we’re being honest, not much. There are 13 heavyweights classified in the world for women’s boxing in BoxRec. Two of the first four are 51 years old. Harrison (2-2-1, 1 KO) is a tough, tough woman, but she hasn’t won a round of 12 against Perkins in two fights. Perkins can fight, good athlete, but there is almost no one out there for her to fight, really, and she would have to go down to 168 to find someone particularly good; we are talking about over 30 pounds to fall there, and she is six feet tall and a solid 200 build.
- Jamie Mitchell TKO-5 Noemi Woods: One-way traffic here. Mitchell, 36, was a good amateur fighter, but he hasn’t fought since a draw in 2019 with current BKFC superstar Britain Hart. It looked very sharp here. Bosques (12-16-3, 2 KO’s) realized this in a short time, but had many solid fighters over the years. Mitchell (6-0-2, 4 KO’s) dominated here, and Boscos was injured in the fourth and again in the fifth. The stoppage was a little strange, but it is another fight where if the minutes were three rounds (like Esparza-Barnett just below in the recap), we would probably have a much more definitive stoppage. Mitchell could certainly compete in 118 or 122, she called and looked great here, and at her age she may as well go soon, if possible.
- Marlen Esparza UD-6 Shelly Barnett: Esparza is a flyweight by profession and has a title fight with Ibeth Zamora lined up, possibly for April, but she fought 10 days ahead as a bantamweight here because she wanted to be on the card. Esparza did well in the first two rounds, warmed up a lot in the third, and dominated the last three rounds to the point that if the women’s fights had three minutes of round, she would have been paralyzed. Esparza (9-1, 1 KO) fully beaten Barnett (4-4-2, 0 KO) in the fourth and fifth rounds in particular, landing loads of left-hand counters and lead rights, causing visible damage to Barnett, who he was outdated in terms of talent, but he is a tough scrapper and always comes to fight. But Esparza surpassed his 126-49 total, and achieved a much higher connection rate (36% to 17%).
- Timur Kerefov TKO-3 Manny Woods: This aired for free in the pre-show, with 31-year-old middleweight Kerefov – a decorated Russian amateur whose professional career has been only small steps despite an advanced age – improving to 11-0 (6 KO’s) through stoppage in a cut in the third round. The cut was not bad in terms of blood loss, but it was in a horrible spot on Woods’ left eye (16-11-1, 6 KO’s), and he was unable to open his eye. Woods, 33, has already lost five in a row, all by stoppage, and seven of the last eight that date back to 2016. It puts Kerefov busy, but not a big win or anything, basically expected beyond the method.