Claressa Shields knows there will always be detractors in the martial arts world, but she has learned that boxing and mixed martial arts have vastly different fan bases.
Shields, the undisputed light middleweight boxing champion, recently improved his professional MMA record to 2-1 with a hard-fought split decision victory over Kelsey DeSantis in a PFL vs. Bellator bout in Saudi Arabia. “T-Rex” has seen the MMA community question her future in the sport, so she was happy to get her win on the big stage. Mainly because she had doubts.
“If I was just a regular Joe and not athletic and not a real fighter or a true fighter, MMA wouldn’t even exist for me,” Shields said on The MMA Hour. “But the fact that I'm really just a dog and I love to fight is true. I love the art of war and I'm going to try hard. That's how I won the fight. I put a lot of effort into this girl. She's a purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu.
“It's like, she's a purple belt and I'm a white belt and she has a lot of MMA experience, she's got three fights compared to my two and I'm 1-1, but she also has Muay Thai experience. I fight and do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. [matches] And I don't have those things. So even though I knew it was risky to go there with her, we worked on my weaknesses.
“But it's funny to me because winning in MMA feels fulfilling, but I feel like in MMA there's more doubt than in boxing. No one doubts me in the boxing world. All over the place. There are people who hate it, [are] Are you seriously going to say that there's a girl in boxing right now who can beat me? No one can stand on it.But when you say [there are] When there's a girl in MMA who can beat me, even if she's at a lower level, people get excited like, “Oh, finally someone can beat her.'' So if I win, they're all just going to be furious. So it's very satisfying for me when they punch me in the air or pull my hair when I win. Because it's just like, “Yes, I worked hard, I won.”
“You doubted me, you're mad, you're the worst.”
Shields won her MMA debut by stopping Brittney Elkin with a third-round TKO at PFL 4 in June 2021, but lost a split decision to Abby Montez four months later at PFL 10.
Her first win in MMA was certainly satisfying, but now that she's been in the cage three times and still hasn't broken down, she knows that she does have a future in MMA and that Her hips are above the line knowing that extra hardware could be involved.
“MMA is just different, but in some weird crazy way, I actually feel kind of relieved that I'm not the greatest thing in MMA. I always surprise people when I win. We know it's going to happen,” Shields explained. . “During a fight, you're always like, 'Oh, this is MMA, this is what she's bad at.' But at first, I felt like I was doing MMA to prove something to the next person. 'Hey, boxers can do MMA too.'
“I wanted to win the fight, which I won by third-round knockout against Brittney Elkin. Then I fought Abby and lost by split decision, and at first I was thinking in my head, 'If this… If these kids have a better ground game than me, more experience, more of everything I have in MMA, why would they follow me compared to them outside of my boxing? Isn't there? Why don't they knock me out, why don't they choke me? The answer I got was because I have the potential to become an MMA champion. ”
