It has been a long time coming, but the fight we’ve all been waiting for is nearly here. Claressa Shields vs Savannah Marshall.
If you’ve visited our site before, you know we love a bit of women’s boxing and we’ve been waiting far too long for this fight to happen. Marshall and Shields have a lot of history together and it all traces back to an amateur fight between the pair where Marshall came out on top, delivering the only blemish to Shields’ boxing record. Ever since the pair went professional this has always been a fight that has been talked about, and the two boxers have taunted each other constantly.
Then, earlier this year contracts were signed, and a fight was agreed upon. One to unite all the belts and crown an undisputed champion.
It was due to take place on the evening of September 10th, 2022, but the Queen passed away that same week, and despite being a woman herself who didn’t stop working through wars, pandemics and other global crises, it seemed the whole of Britain fell apart. Events were being cancelled left, right and centre “out of respect”, although the best way to pay respect to a woman of Lizzy’s magnitude would’ve been to have kept calm and carried on.
However, that wasn’t the case and Savannah Marshall’s undisputed world title fight with Claressa Shields was cancelled. But fortunately, we’ve not had to wait long at all with the fight rescheduled to take place this weekend on October 15th at London’s O2 Arena.
Before we take a more detailed look at the main fight between Marshall and Shields, let’s take a look at the rest of the card of this historic all-female event.
Shields vs Marshall Fight Card
For the first time in boxing history, we have an all-female card with two cracking co-headline fights. Here is the full list of fights taking place on the Shields vs Marshall fight card:
- Claressa Shields (c) vs. Savannah Marshall (c) for the WBC, IBF, WBA and WBO middleweight titles
- Mikaela Mayer (c) vs. Alycia Baumgardner (c) for the WBO, IBF and WBC junior lightweight titles
- Caroline Dubois vs. Milena Koleva
- Lauren Price MBE vs. Timea Belik
- Karriss Artingstall vs. Marina Sakharov
- Ebonie Jones vs. Vanesa Caballero
- April Hunter vs. Erica Juana Gabriela Alvarez
- Shannon Ryan vs. Buchra El Quaissi
- Ginny Fuchs vs. Gemma Ruegg
- Sarah Liegmann vs. Bec Connolly
- Georgia O’Connor vs. Joyce Van Ee
Ones to Watch
Of the above fights, everyone obviously wants to see the two co-headline fights, but what else on the card should people keep an eye on? Let’s take a look at some of the stand-out fights we’re excited about.
Georgia O’Connor vs. Joyce Van Ee
At the young age of just 22, few have been through as much as Georgia O’Connor who has overcome serious illness and a poor spell with Team GB to start her pro career undefeated with two wins under her belt. Her opponent Joyce Van Ee has only one additional fight on her record, a draw that has been sandwiched between two wins. We only see this fight going one way, and that’s a win for O’Connor, and it’ll hopefully set the tone for an excellent night of boxing.
Caroline Dubois vs. Milena Koleva
Koleva has previously had a world title shot and Dubois thinks she deserves to be offered one. So, what better way to get fired up for the two co-headline fights than with this tasty fight? Dubois clearly thinks very highly of herself, but she is still very much in the early stages of her career with just three professional fights to her name. She has, however, won them all. Whereas Koleva has losses on her record, she has fought the best and gone the distance with them too, so this could be a great one to watch.
The Main Events
As we’ve mentioned, this historic fight stacked with all female fighters has two headline fights both looking for the fighters taking part to unify all the titles in their respective weight classes. Let’s take a little look at what we can expect:
Mikaela Mayer vs. Alycia Baumgardner
In the co-headliner for this event, we see Mayer and Baumgardner going head-to-head to unify the WBC, WBO and IBF super-featherweight world titles. The two have clashed previously so it should be a great contest although Mayer did come out to say:
I know there’s been a lot of trash talk between me and Baumgardner but I respect her enough to train extremely hard for this fight.
Mikaela Mayer
Mayer is the more experienced fighter of the two with an undefeated record consisting of 17 wins including five by way of knockout, compared to Baumgardner who has just 12 wins to her name and one loss. The one edge that Baumgardner has over her opponent though is her power, having claimed seven knockouts in her professional career.
It will be sure to be a great warm-up for the main event and the reason we’ll all be tuning in on Saturday, but we can’t see anything more than a Mayer victory. However, we are expecting the fight to go the distance and it to come down to points.
Claressa Shields vs. Savannah Marshall
If this fight hadn’t already been hyped up enough, things just got a lot more interesting when the WBC announced an added incentive for the fight by introducing the new WBC Elizabethan Belt in honour of Queen Elizabeth II. And Marshall is determined to ensure that the belt will be staying where it belongs in the UK:
I just seen the WBC tribute belt and it’s brilliant. It’s really good and the WBC have really pushed the boat out with that one – it’s one of a kind…It can’t leave this country.
Savannah Marshall
Many are putting this down as a closely fought contest between the two title holders who will be looking to unify the WBC, IBF, WBA and WBO middleweight titles. Many pundits are split about who the victor will be with many Americans backing Shields and the home crowd backing Marshall.
Will we see a repeat of the last time these two met? We don’t just hope so, we expect Marshall to leave Shields in a mess on the floor of the ring.
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