Claressa Shields talks about the rift between her and women’s boxing legend Laila Ali!
For unified middleweight champion Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (10-0, 2 KO’s) life is proceeding in splendid fashion both personally and professionally. She is a two-time, back-to-back Olympic gold medalist, undisputed middleweight champion, three-division unified champion and the quickest fighter, male or female, to become a three-divisional world champion.
Along with those lofty accolades, Shields (24), is the pride of Flint, Michigan, a growing pop icon and arguably the face of women’s boxing. Not bad for a gal who got it all from the mud! When looking at her laundry list of accomplishments it should come as little surprise that she earnestly feels as though she is greatest woman fighter of all time.
Or, GWAOT as T-Rex has famously coined.
PUT SOME RESPECT ON MY NAME!
Perhaps this high self-appraisal is the underlining reason why Shields has something of simmering, not quite boiling, beef with former super middleweight champion Leila “She Bee Stingin” Ali (24-0, 21 KO’s). While appearing as a guest on the popular national radio program The Breakfast Club, Shields listed a number of reasons why there was a rift between herself and Ali.
Ironically enough, she first took offense to the thought process of Ali when she herself was a guest on the Breakfast Club. While on the show, Ali, daughter of the legend Muhammad Ali, stated that if she were to come out of retirement there was no one on deck who she couldn’t knockout.
Being that they competed in the same division, Shields took this to be a direct shot at her. A shot that she was not feeling whatsoever. There has been funk ever since.
“Like don’t be selfish. It’s okay to pass the torch. You’re retired now and I’ll give you your respect if you give me mine. But just to hear her say that there’s no woman that can give her a challenge and [we] fight [at] the same weight? It was just like, if you come out of retirement I smoke you!
“And it was more like to let you know, don’t disrespect me and I won’t disrespect you and that’s where I went with it.
“But do I want to fight a 41 or 40 year old Laila Ali? No! I actually want for her to embrace me. I embrace her and we build women’s boxing to the place that it’s supposed to be.”
THE THIN LINE BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE
At the root of the problem, this boils down to a case of “don’t start nothing and there won’t be nothing!” Clearly, the 2x Olympian harbors a massive amount of respect for Ali, her career and the work that she put in to advance women’s boxing as a whole. At the same time, regardless of how much Shields respects Ali, she is totally unwilling to stand for any manner of disrespect.
T-Rex openly sympathized with the fact that she realizes Ali did not get all of her just due when she was still an active fighter. She also has taken into account that many felt Ali ducked the extremely dangerous Ann Wolfe, a notion that she does not necessarily agree with.
However, Shields has seen Ali display a level of warmth to other female fighters that she has not extended to her and at the end of the day it’s apparent that Shields does take the entire matter quite personally.
“I already know that she doesn’t show me any kind of support. Like I see her comment all the time on this other boxer girl Katie Taylor and always telling her congrats and everything but then with me it’s like she don’t show any kind of respect or acknowledgment and I’m a black girl just like she is who came up hard.
“I just think in boxing she feels like she never got her fair share. She never got to the point that she wanted to get to. People recognize Laila Ali but they always try to say she was only big because of her dad and they don’t give her props on her skills.
“I’m not one of those people. I think that she fought who she fought and she had to win, but I think that Laila Ali was a great fighter and that she did a lot for women’s boxing regardless if her dad was Ali or someone else.”
By: Bakari Simpson
