Was it ever in doubt? Claressa Shields made boxing history as she became the first person to be undisputed champion across two divisions. Nobody before, male or female has achieved this in the four-belt era as the American outclassed Canadian rival Marie-Eve Dicaire in their light-middleweight title fight.
The 25-year-old has won all eleven of her professional fights and this latest win, coming via a unanimous points decision, saw her snatch Dicaire’s IBF crown as well as taking the vacant WBA title. Her own WBC and WBO light-middleweight belts were on the line but she was never in danger of losing this one, winning every single round on all three judges' scorecards.
The fourth round saw Shields make clean contact with a sharp left hand, while in the sixth, an impressive combination again left her opponent reeling. We saw the best of the self-proclaimed GWOAT in the eighth as she searched for a stoppage, launching into a barrage of punches which left Dicaire on shaky legs but to her credit she stayed up, and fought back in the tenth.
The Canadian brought a perfect 17-0 record into this fight, as well as her belt, but this performance just proves how far ahead of every other boxer on the planet she is at the moment.
She may just be the best female sportsperson currently walking the earth.
Shields landed 116 punches to Dicaire’s 31 in another utterly dominant performance in her hometown of Flint, Michigan, as the pair headlined the first all-female pay per view boxing card, another piece of history and an important step towards equality in the sport.
Her professional dominance has been an extension of her incredible amatuer career, during which she scooped two Olympic gold medals in London and Rio and won 77 of her 78 fights. The only person to beat ‘T-Rex’ in her entire career is Britain's Savannah Marshall, the current WBO middleweight champion. After winning her latest fight, Shields set her sights on revenge, calling Marshall out saying: "You won a lucky decision when we were kids."
@ClaressaShields outlanded Marie Eve Dicaire 116 punches to 31 on Friday night. (via @FiteTV) #ShieldsDicaire
It looks unlikely that we will ever see Katie Taylor and Shields share a ring however, given the weight difference between the two, with the latter laughing off a suggestion in the ring, saying it would take “a million dollars.”
Those fights are for the future, for now we should just enjoy getting to watch a female fighter who is taking the game to a whole new level. She might just be unbeatable, the best female boxer we have ever seen, and full of confidence to boot. In the build-up to this fight she said, “Muhammad Ali is first, and Claressa Shields is second. I am the greatest woman of all time, and 98 percent of men in the world can't beat me.”
The best in the world have an air of arrogance about them, but when you can back up the talk like she has time and time again in the ring, arrogance becomes the truth. Claressa Shields, history maker.
