Hanna Gabriels Still Has No Love for Shields
It’s not required to have a bit of bad blood to get a great boxing match, but it certainly helps! This is somewhat the case when it comes to versatile WBA world super welterweight champion Hanna “La Amazona” Gabriels (20-2-1, 11 KO’s). The bout that tops her wish list is a rematch with Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (9-0, 2 KO’s). The two staged a very entertaining headlining scrap in June of 2018.
A BITTER BEEF
After ten rounds of robust action, Gabriels wound up dropping a unanimous decision loss. Yet, although she lost, La Amazona did manage to drop Shields in the first round. The knock down remains the sole instance that Shields touched the canvas as a professional.
Due to the competitiveness of the prizefight, and what she feels was biased judging, Gabriels would love the opportunity to square off with T-Rex one more time. Since her dust-up with Shields, Hanna Gabriels successfully collected two victories over Abril Argentina Vidal and Sarah Dwyer. Both fights took place in 2019.
“We had a good fight and I believe that my cards are not fair because they actually gave Hammer better cards than I did. And that’s not fair. I gave her a better fight. But you know, we do things the best way that we can do, but I just don’t believe her acting and all that. I don’t like it.” ~Hanna Gabriels, WBA world super welterweight champion
A RIVARLY ALIVE AND WELL
Even though La Amazona has returned to the win column, and is a champion in her natural super welterweight division, clearly Shields is a topic that rubs her the wrong way. The mere mentioning of her name is sure to get a knee jerk facial reaction of distaste. While conducting an interview with EsNews, the Costa Rican champ took issue with T-Rex on a number of issues.
When directly asked if she thought Shields should be recognized as a pound-for-pound talent Gabriels could not bring herself to say that she was. Ironically, Gabriels was reluctant to put herself on the list because she does not hop around the weight classes.
“It’s okay, it’s their [media] job to do that. I believe I want to see her [Shields] with tougher fights like me.”
Yet, when it was pointed out that Shields is a three division champion, La Amazona shrugged it off and suggested that she should fight stiffer competition. Not only did she think that T-Rex should step up her opposition, Gabriels not so subtly suggested that Shield was a media hype job. Clearly these two are not destined to be pals, at least not while they are both still active fighters!
By: Bakari Simpson
