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Claressa Shields, left, desires to struggle Savannah Marshall, proper, earlier than Shields’s deliberate return to blended martial arts in November.
Mikey Williams/Getty Pictures
LONDON – Representatives for Claressa Shields are optimistic that Shields shall be obtainable to face longtime rival Savannah Marshall on Oct. 15 in the UK, Shields’s supervisor, Mark Taffet, informed Sports activities Illustrated on Monday. Shields-Marshall, initially scheduled for Sept. 10, was postponed within the aftermath of Queen Elizabeth’s loss of life final week.
In saying the postponement, Boxxer, the lead promoter of the historic all-women’s card, stated the present could be provisionally rescheduled for Oct. 15. That’s as a result of Shields, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-division world champion, is scheduled to return to blended martial arts and compete within the Skilled Fighters League in November.
Taffet informed SI he’s negotiating with PFL officers to work out a decision.
“[Claressa] desires to do the struggle as quickly as attainable,” Taffet stated. “She was prepared bodily and mentally. We’re going to do our greatest to get that carried out.”
Whereas one end result is Shields’s return to PFL being pushed again, Taffet says Shields is retaining an open thoughts about going through Marshall on the fifteenth and going proper into an MMA struggle in late November. Shields is 1–1 within the PFL, shedding her final struggle by cut up resolution to Abigail Montes final October—her solely loss in skilled fight sports activities.
Shields’s showdown with Marshall was one of the anticipated fights of the yr. The rivalry between the 2 fighters stretches greater than a decade, when Marshall defeated Shields in an novice event, the one lack of Shields’s boxing profession. The 2 exchanged sharp phrases at a press convention final week, with Marshall labeling Shields a “bully” and Shields countering that Marshall has been “residing off one novice win for ten years.”
“I’ve received two Olympic gold medals and ten titles in [three] completely different divisions,” Shields stated. “She has one belt. It is like they’re attempting to erase every little thing I’ve carried out previously years. I’ve been dominating boxing for a decade. She’s carried out an amazing job selling herself off of me.”
If Shields-Marshall is finalized, the remainder of the cardboard is predicted to stay intact. That features a 130-pound title unification struggle between Mikaela Mayer and Alycia Baumgardner, which can function the co-main occasion. Additionally anticipated to seem in separate fights is welterweight Lauren Value, a 2020 Olympic gold medalist for Nice Britain, and flyweight Ginny Fuchs, the captain of the ’20 U.S. Olympic ladies’s boxing crew.
