The primary time Claressa Shields and Maricela Cornejo went head-to-head, they co-starred in a YouTube video.
When it hit the web in 2019, Shields was already a two-time Olympic gold medalist with a number of skilled titles, together with the undisputed middleweight championship. Cornejo was a seven-year veteran, however nonetheless constructing an internet model that encompassed boxing, trend, health and self-help.
Their dialog, which appeared on Cornejo’s YouTube channel, touched on boxing, after all, but in addition on the 2 girls’s shared histories as survivors of childhood sexual assault. The interview showcased each girls as susceptible, tender, supportive and sisterly; skilled colleagues with the makings of shut pals.
On Saturday in Detroit, Shields and Cornejo will meet as opponents, with Shields’s undisputed middleweight title at stake. The pairing highlights the close-knit world of elite girls’s boxing, the place bitter rivalries abound, however the place boxers will be one another’s pals, followers, coaching companions and adversaries, typically in pretty fast succession.
“If anyone desires to get within the ring and battle for my belts, I’m going to place all that friendship to the aspect,” stated Shields, who’s 13-0 with two knockouts. “That is prizefighting. It’s not pal preventing.”
The Shields-Cornejo title battle, which can headline a card at Little Caesars Enviornment in downtown Detroit, is the highest-profile girls’s bout of early 2023, and a follow-up to the blockbuster occasions that vaulted girls’s boxing into the highlight final 12 months.
Final April, a light-weight title bout between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano bought out Madison Sq. Backyard. Taylor received a choice in a raucous brawl that drew 1.5 million viewers to the streaming platform DAZN, which may also present Saturday’s bout. Six months later, in October 2022, Shields defeated Savannah Marshall in a high-stakes, high-octane title bout in London. A reported two million viewers watched that battle.
Organizers of each occasions declare every was the richest bout in girls’s boxing historical past, and most years both matchup would have stood alone as the one most important girls’s bout on the schedule. They featured large names, full arenas, aggressive motion and, not coincidentally, sustained promotion main into battle evening.
This weekend’s bout between Shields and Cornejo is completely different.
Cornejo, who’s 16-5 with six knockouts, dedicated to the bout early final week, after Shields’s authentic opponent, Hanna Gabriels of Costa Rica, failed a doping check.
Even with a brand new opponent and quick advertising runway, Shields’s promoter, Dmitriy Salita, views Detroit as one cause this battle might draw followers. Placing Shields, who grew up in Flint, Mich., atop a card on the new area in Detroit additionally locations her squarely inside the metropolis’s boxing custom, he stated.
“This isn’t a metropolis the place there isn’t a boxing historical past. This is without doubt one of the richest boxing histories on this planet,” Salita stated. “The stress that she’s beneath and the doorways that she’s opening, each battle is a brilliant battle for her.”
Sugar Ray Robinson spent his childhood in Detroit, and Joe Louis made town his residence base. In March 1980, three months after Joe Louis Enviornment opened, Hilmer Kenty, the primary world champion from the famed Kronk Gymnasium in Detroit, defended his light-weight title there. Kronk’s most well-known product, Thomas Hearns, who was nicknamed the Hitman, fought within the cofeature on the identical card.
Shields, 28, enters Saturday as one in every of boxing’s most dominant opponents of any gender. She not often loses rounds, and has solely misplaced two official fights in her life. As a 17-year-old newbie she dropped a disputed determination to Marshall within the lead-up to the 2012 Olympics, and in October 2021 she misplaced a blended martial arts bout to Abigail Montes within the Skilled Fighters League.
However as knowledgeable boxer, Shields has received world titles in three weight courses, and has been the undisputed champion at 154 and 160 kilos. She has defeated so many champions that she has begun in search of rematches with boxers she has outclassed.
Her 2018 bout in opposition to Gabriels led to a lopsided determination win. Salita stated that if Shields wins on Saturday she may face the winner of an upcoming bout between Marshall and Franchón Crews-Dezurn, each of whom Shields has already vanquished.
The seek for a stiff problem spans sports activities — Shields hopes to return to blended martial arts later this 12 months — and each boxing division, from 147-pound welterweight to 168-pound tremendous middleweight.
“I watch all of them, simply in case they wish to make that leap,” Shields stated.
Saturday’s card falls on the midpoint of a busy interval for high-level professional boxing. Earlier this spring, Gervonta Davis knocked out Ryan Garcia at 136 kilos, whereas Devin Haney squeaked previous Vasiliy Lomachenko to stay the undisputed light-weight champion.
Later this summer time, Stephen Fulton of Philadelphia and Naoya Inoue of Japan will meet in a super-bantamweight title battle that excites boxing purists. And on July 29, the long-delayed assembly between the welterweight champions Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford is scheduled to happen in Las Vegas.
For her half, Shields was set to rematch Gabriels, when the Costa Rican contender examined optimistic for a steroid, clostebol. Gabriels stated she absorbed the substance inadvertently, claiming it was an ingredient in an ointment she rubbed on her canine to assist him heal from surgical procedure.
Both method, she was scratched, and changed with Cornejo, who was already coaching for a special bout.
Cornejo, 36, not too long ago relocated from Seattle to Las Vegas, the place she works with the famend coach Ismael Salas. She and Shields have one widespread opponent, Crews-Dezurn, who has defeated Cornejo twice.
However Cornejo enters Saturday with a three-bout win streak, and, after working with Salas, renewed confidence in her expertise and ways. She maintains a wholesome esteem for Shields, however stays targeted on upsetting her.
“She is aware of I respect her, and she or he respects me as properly,” Cornejo stated. “However after we get in a battle, it’s both you or me, honey.”