Dicaire needs to make a tactical adjustment.
Her Plan A is to circle and run in with occasional left hand leads. Plan B seems to involve circling, then running in to grab Shields. In between it all, Shields keeps landing punches.
A mid-round salvo from Shields likely won this round for her.
For the first time in the fight, it was Shields’s movement that dictated the sixth round. She spent the round stalking Dicaire, while Dicaire — sensing things were turning — wrapped Shields up at every opportunity. At one point, as Dicaire hugged her, Shields raised her arms and looked at the referee, seemingly exasperated.
Shields landed a couple of good shots, but wasn’t able to connect with the full power of her right fist.
Another round for Shields. Dicaire is game, but is in danger of a deep deficit on the scorecards. Shields lands when she shortens her punches and misses when she wings big shots. Still, she ended Round 5 with a 119-17 advantage in landed punches.
Dicaire ended the fourth round tangled with Shields, and the two fighters seemed to be chirping at each other. It was an appropriate end to what was probably Dicaire’s best round yet, as she landed a solid blow to Shields’s head. But as commentator Dan Cannobio said, Dicaire has been hesitant to wade into “the deep muddy waters” and really engage with Shields; she knows that is a dangerous idea.
Shields is beating an increasingly frustrated Dicaire to the punch. An early lead right caught Dicaire’s attention. Dicaire responded by jamming her forearm into Shields’s throat and driving her into a corner.
Shields answered that foul with a clean right to Dicaire’s forehead.
Shields opened the second round more aggressively than she did the first, unloading a few punches to Dicaire’s body early. Dicaire remained jittery, constantly walking and trying to make something happen with her movement. Shields stayed calm while waiting for an opening and landing occasional shots with her jab.
Neither fighter landed any major punches, but Shields looks like she could end the fight at any moment.
Cagey opening moments, with Dicaire circling left and feinting until Shields popped her with an overhand right to the face. That punch prompted Dicaire to circle right with more feints, until Shields clipped her with a left hook.
Dicaire moved more, Shields landed more.
Claressa Shields and Marie-Eve Dicaire square off in the main event.
Their 10-round fight will determine the 154-pound champion.
Several fighters have thanked Claressa Shields for putting them on tonight’s all-women’s card. Jamie Mitchell, who beat Noemi Bosques by technical knockout, praised Shields as the G.W.O.A.T. (Greatest Woman of All Time) and for fighting for gender equality in sports.
“She set the platform for all women in boxing and combat sports,” Mitchell said after she was declared the winner.
Both fighters overcame rough childhoods to get to this point in their boxing careers.
Shields’s mother struggled with addition and her father spent years in prison. She was sexually abused by one of her mother’s boyfriends, and eventually moved in with her grandmother, whom she adored but who died when she was in 10th grade, before Shields made it to the Olympics. Afterward, her former coach, Jason Crutchfield, took her in, fed her and gave her both a stable place to stay and someone consistent to count on.
transcript
transcript
Bout Time: Claressa Shields
The story of Claressa Shields, a 16-year-old female boxer living in Flint, Mich.
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Mitchell also had longed for that consistency.
When she was 10 days old, she was sent to a foster home because of her mother’s cocaine addiction. She never knew her father. With no family to count on, she lived in dozens of foster homes. At one, she was starved and tortured and was finally moved out of it when she was 6 after her arm was found to have been forcibly broken. That was just one of her 50 stops in foster homes.
Like Shields, Mitchell looked to boxing to escape her past.
When Danielle Perkins and Monika Harrison first squared off last August, Perkins, a 38-year-old heavyweight who played basketball at St. Johns in the mid-2000s, won every round.
Elsewhere in the combat sports world, that type of one-sided result wouldn’t call for a rematch, but women’s heavyweight boxing only features 14 active fighters worldwide, according to the online database BoxRec.com. With few opponents to choose from, Perkins and Harrison met again, this time with a title at stake.
The outcome didn’t change, though. Perkins, who is based in Houston and also played basketball professionally, landed 101 punches while Harrison connected just 21 times across eight rounds. The gap in athletic ability was glaring, with Perkins landing punches and dancing out of range, and sustaining her effort late as fatigue slowed Harrison.
Perkins, who is studying for a master’s degree in finance, is now 3-0 as a professional, and the win earned her a minor heavyweight title.
Danielle Perkins won the W.B.C. silver heavyweight title.
The judges said Perkins won all eight rounds over Monika Harrison.
The next time you watch Claressa Shields fight, she might not be boxing but grappling or wrestling her opponent.
Last year, Shields signed an agreement to fight in the Professional Fighters League, a mixed martial arts company that uses a season format for the sport. Shields has said she wants to compete twice in mixed martial arts in 2021, and then participate in the 2022 season.
Shields has been quite vocal about her belief that her boxing matches should be higher profile, and that she should be earning more money. She has also been quite clear about what she believes is the cause: sexism. “They’re always yelling equality, equal pay, equal opportunities, but they don’t mean it,” she told The Times. “Because all they have to do is say yes.”
Compared with boxing, more women have found a way to earn fame and riches in mixed martial arts, primarily in the U.F.C. Fighters like Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes have all earned individual purses over half a million dollars, and regularly competed for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Shields hopes to soon join them.
As the hometown favorite, Claressa Shields, a native of Flint, Mich., expects many friends and family members to be in the audience tonight to cheer her on. But her older brother, Artis J. Mack, won’t be among them.
Mack, 28, is in prison in Michigan for assaulting 68-year-old boxing trainer James Ali Bashir a day before Shields was supposed to fight Ivana Habazin in October 2019 in Flint. At the weigh-in, Mack punched Bashir in the head, sending Mack to the ground, where he hit his head and sustained face and head injuries, and was hospitalized. The fight, scheduled to be broadcast on Showtime, was postponed when Bashir couldn’t be in Habazin’s corner. He needed surgery to repair damaged teeth.
In an interview last month, Shields said Mack attacked Bashir just after Bashir had been verbally harassing their sister, but she didn’t see the situation unfold. She emphasized that her brother, who had a previous a criminal record, was not part of her fight team or entourage and that she didn’t condone what he did.
“A lot of people in boxing don’t like my brother and sister,” she said. “But I love my family regardless of what they do. If they do something that makes them go to jail, well that’s, you know, that’s on them.”
The fight against Habazin finally happened last in January 2020, in Atlantic City. It was the last time Shields fought before tonight.
Shields beat Habazin in a unanimous decision to win the vacant W.B.C. and W.B.O. 154-pound world titles. The victory made her the fastest three-weight division world champion in boxing history.
According to the Michigan Department of Corrections website, her brother is scheduled to be released from prison in July, if he is not granted parole before then.
Danielle Perkins fights Monika Harrison in the co-main event.
They are scheduled to fight eight rounds for a vacant W.B.C. heavyweight title.
Veteran bantamweight Noemi Bosques is what boxing people call a gatekeeper. Beating her doesn’t guarantee a fighter will become a world champion, but a win signals that a prospect is ready for the next step. A loss to a fighter like Bosques, who entered Friday with a 12-15-3 record, is a strong hint that it’s time to right-size a fighter’s ambitions.
After battering Bosques over five bruising rounds, Las Vegas-based bantamweight Jamie Mitchell can keep making world championship plans. Mitchell, now 6-0-2, outclassed Bosques with speed, power and defense, landing 94 punches compared with just 24 for Bosques. Late in Round 4, Mitchell landed a lead left hook that sent Bosques reeling. A round later she unleashed several salvos, and a final volley of lefts and rights prompted referee Gerard White to stop the fight.
Jamie Mitchell won after the referee stopped the fight in the fifth round.
Mitchell is undefeated at 6-0-2.
Tonight’s event is being distributed by Fite.TV, a digital streaming service for boxing, mixed martial arts and wresting that is a relative newcomer to showing big fights. Unless you are a fighting die-hard, you might only know Fite.TV from last November’s card featuring Mike Tyson fighting Roy Jones Jr. and YouTube star Jake Paul fighting former N.B.A. player Nate Robinson.
Compared with that event, however — which also featured commentary from Snoop Dogg and performances by rappers like French Montana and Wiz Khalifa between fights — the production values for tonight’s card are notably lower. There are fewer camera angles, the lighting is harsher and there are no decorative set elements.
That is because while Fite.TV may have distributed both fights, they aren’t producing them. The Tyson fight was produced by Triller, a TikTok-like social media app that is trying to gain attention by making a splash in the boxing world. Triller recently paid $6 million for the rights to show Teofimo Lopez’s next title defense.
Tonight’s production, on the other hand, is being financed Salita Promotions. Dmitriy Salita is a former fighter turned promoter, and his biggest client happens to be Claressa Shields. If tonight’s pay-per-view event sells well, perhaps Shields’s next fight will be on a platform like Showtime, and Salita Promotions will move a step closer to challenging big time promoters like Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions.
To gauge the pedigree gap between Marlen Esparza and Shelly Barnett, go back to February 2016. Esparza was an Olympic bronze medalist and world amateur champion preparing for her second Games, while Barnett lost in the final of the Brampton Cup, an amateur tournament in suburban Toronto.
Or listen to the broadcast crew, who detailed the lopsided punch stats Barnett’s last opponent ran up — landing 113 punches to Barnett’s 44 — and tried to spin it as a positive, proof that Barnett could take punishment.
Esparza handed out plenty of punishment, outlanding Barnett 126 to 49 over six rounds, en route to a unanimous decision win. Esparza, 31, cranked up her output gradually, and by the fifth round Barnett’s face was much redder. Every judge awarded Esparza (9-1, 1 knockout) every round on the scorecards.
From here, she goes to a previously scheduled title fight next month.
Jamie Mitchell faces Noemi Bosques at bantamweight.
They are scheduled to fight six rounds.
Claressa Shields usually makes a point of dressing with flair for her fights, and with some meaning. Her blue braids, for example, are her shout out to the continuing water crisis in her hometown, Flint, Mich., where tonight’s fight is being held at the Dort Financial Center.
Tonight, Shields’s fight outfit will honor Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna, who were killed last year in a helicopter crash on the way to a youth basketball tournament. Shields will wear the Los Angeles Lakers colors (purple and gold), with custom trunks. Kobe’s name is in big letters on the right thigh of her trunks, while Gianna’s name is on the left. (Shields’s socks feature images of herself, with the letters G.W.O.A.T., which stands for Greatest Woman of All Time.)
Shields said she met Bryant a few times, including once before the 2012 Olympics in London, which was the first time women’s boxing was included in the Summer Games. She remembers him telling her to work hard and that she was a good fighter. He had a good eye for talent. Shields won the gold medal at those Olympics, the first of her two Olympic golds.
After Bryant and Gianna died in the crash, Shields told the Mayweather YouTube channel that their deaths devastated her. She cried and tried to sleep off the grief, she said, hoping she would wake up to realize it was all just “a weird nightmare.”
“It really hurt my feelings,” she said of Bryant’s death. “He wasn’t just a great basketball player, but he was a great influencer. He was so nice.”