FLINT, Mich. Claressa Shields wanted to make history on several levels on Friday night. The first part she handled before she even penetrated the ring, with a pay-per-view card for all women.
The second part she took care of in the ring in a way similar to all her fights before. Shields defeated Marie-Eve Dicaire by unanimous decision to become the first boxer in the four-belt period (since 2004), male or female, to be an undisputed champion in two divisions. Shields retains her WBC and WBO junior middleweight titles while claiming Dicaire’s IBF crown and the vacant WBA world title.
“I did it,” Shields said in the ring after the fight, which for the first time in 20 years was a female boxing match the most important event of a pay-per-view.
All three judges won the battle 100-90, a clean sweep for the fighter who calls herself the greatest of all time. Shields landed 116 of 409 hits, and Dicaire landed 31 of 263. Shields delivered double-digit hits in seven of the ten rounds.
After the fight, Shields (11-0, 2 KO) was asked if she would drop to 147 pounds to fight Katie Taylor. Shields laughed and complimented Taylor as a fighter.
“They had to pay me a lot of money to lose my butt to go down to 147,” Shields said, adding that she would do it for a million dollars. Shields then called out Savannah Marshall, the one fighter who had beaten her as an amateur, and said Marshall was ‘scared of me’.
Fights in her hometown, Shields, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, were consistently dominant against Dicaire (17-1). When she entered the ring, most of the more than 300 fans in the Dort Financial Center Arena stood out with their camera phones to register the event.
They stood for most of the game and got harder in the sixth and seventh rounds as Shields started to release more power shots. One of the beats made Dicaire falter and cheer early in the sixth. After the fight, Shields said she was hit in the elbow several times and hit in the head.
After the fight was over, Shields held all the belts in her arms and on her waist. She thanked the people in Flint and said that she thought ‘another million years’ when she was a child she would fight a pay-per-view card in her hometown.
Shields said she would take a week to celebrate her birthday and then start practicing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for her MMA debut in June.