Claressa Shields is set to take off the boxing gloves and test the MMA waters when she makes her Professional Fighters League debut on June 10 against Brittney Elkin.
Shields has seemingly conquered every frontier on the boxing front as a three-time division world champ, two-time Olympic champ and a two-time undisputed champ in two different weight classes. Now, as her manager Mark Taffet told Pete Hoffman on the latest episode of The Fight Fan, Shields is looking to further cement her claim as the greatest woman athlete of all time by conquering another sport entirely.
“About a year and a half ago, she started talking to be about being an MMA fighter,” Taffet said. “At the time, she was interested to see if Amanda Nunes would fight her or if Cris Cyborg would fight her. So, we had a number of conversations and I started putting a plan together with her to not have her leave boxing and go to MMA, because she’s such a great boxer and still has history to make there, but we thought it would be much more impactful, specifically with her GWOAT claims and being the greatest woman of all time, which is really the goal of hers, to pursue both sports at the same time.”
Shields has been open about the faults of women’s boxing and its inability to market its stars, which was heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. If Shields wants to become the household name she feels she deserves to be, she believes she will have to move from the ring to the octagon and show her diversity and dominance in whatever combat sport she decides to take on.
“The pandemic actually helped make this move even easier for Claressa,” Taffet said. “As I’ve said to many people, women’s boxing in the United States wasn’t put to the back of the bus, it was thrown off the bus during the coronavirus pandemic. Claressa is a young girl in the physical prime of her life with a lot of history she still wants to make and huge goals she wants to do not just in sports, but for women on the equality front. So we said ‘let’s put the pedal to the metal.’”
Of course, a move to MMA doesn’t mean a permanent move away from boxing, a sport Shields has dominated her entire career. Instead, Shields wants to continue to expand her brand and become a “household name.”
“Do like what Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson did,” Taffet said. “Except in the case of Claressa, it’s even more difficult. They had seasons that didn’t overlap much. Boxing and MMA overlap all the time. They’re both year-round sports. So she’s got to be training in both sports simultaneously all the time if she’s going to be serious about this and she wants to be a champion in both sports and hold titles simultaneously. She’s got her work cut out for her. But if anyone can do it, Claressa can.”
Shields will begin that journey into Sanders and Jackson territory next week, but as for fully jumping into an MMA season, Taffet says the entrance will be gradual, and PFL is in it for “the long haul” with Shields. But if she impacts the sport like she did boxing, her entrance will likely be accelerated dramatically.
“When you have someone like Claressa Shields, it’s gonna take a lot of steel and a lot of bricks to hold her back from participating in their season next year, because she wants to be the best,” Taffet said. “She’s said to give her a year, and she’ll be ready for anybody.”
Listen to Taffet’s full interview on The Fight Fan below!
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