The O2 Arena in London plays host to a landmark moment in women’s boxing this weekend when an all-female card descends on the capital.
Savannah Marshall’s grudge match with self-proclaimed ‘GWOAT’ Claressa Shields for the undisputed middleweight championship headlines the blockbuster BOXXER event on Sky Sports, while Mikaela Mayer vs Alycia Baumgardner for the WBC, WBO, IBO, IBF super-featherweight straps, a bill topper in its own right, provides tantalising chief support. On top of that, we also get to see rising star Caroline Dubois, Olympians Lauren Price and Karriss Artingstall, and the popular Ebonie Jones in action.
The women’s fight game has never had it so good and it’s begun to win over some of its biggest critics, none more so than Marshall’s trainer Peter Fury, who admits that working with the Hartlepool puncher has converted him.
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“If you’d have asked me six, seven years ago, would I have ever trained a woman, I’d never have seen it - I would never have seen a woman coming up to me and asking me to train her in the first place,” Fury told the Lightweight Boxing Show.
“I just never looked at it, I had no interest in it either and I thought, and I’ve got girls myself, ‘being punched in the face?’ I wouldn’t see my girls getting punched in the face - so I didn’t envisage it at all.
“But, you know what, I’ve seen the barriers that they can go through and it’s shocked me to be fair. It’s proved me wrong, because they can do and take as much stick as a man. They deserve all the accolades they get because it’s just as hard and it’s a little bit more exciting because they’re two minute rounds, you see more action.”
The upcoming battle between Marshall and Shields could be one of the most heated rivalries in recent memory, with the feud between the two going back more than a decade when Marshall beat the American as an amateur, the only defeat the double Olympic gold medalist has suffered in both the paid and unpaid ranks so far.
And Fury says his charge is prepared both mentally and physically for the challenge ahead.
“I’m absolutely ecstatic for Savannah, I really am. If ever a girl deserved to be here she does. And she’s gone through a brutal camp to be here, so she really wants it badly.
“I said ‘the worst thing you can ever do is think about the size of the occasion, all you need to think about is when that bell goes and what you’ve trained for.’ She’s mentally, physically prepared 100 percent for this fight. I don’t see anything mental or emotions getting in the way here. As a matter of fact, she’s excited, she’s soaking it all up and she’s enjoying herself.
“And when I ask and I speak to her, I say, ‘how are you Savannah’ and she says ‘I feel good, I'm just excited and I can’t wait to get in there.’”
You can catch our interview with Marshall herself below.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject To Change
