Claressa Shields wants everyone to know she has no reason to hate Savannah Marshall ahead of their alleged grudge match this weekend.
The two big rivals will finally have the chance to settle the score when they meet at London’s O2 Arena on October 15 after a proposed fight was postponed in September following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Shields insists she has no reason to hate Marshall
On Saturday, Shields will be putting her WBA, WBC, IBF, WBF and The Ring middleweight titles on the line and Marshall’s WBO title is also up for grabs in this huge undisputed 160lb battle.
Despite sharing a heated rivalry with Marshall over the years and leading up to their final fight, “The GWOAT” insists there’s no animosity on her side.
“I mean, she hates me because I’m much bigger than her,” Shields told White & Jordan on talkSPORT.
“That’s it, people keep trying to make it look like it’s me. I’m more vocal, but how could I hate someone who has far less achievements than me in any category?
“We can go to the amateurs; my amateur pedigree was better than hers. We can go to the Olympics; my Olympic pedigree is better than hers. We can go to the pros, I’m a pro for five years, a 12-time world champion. She is a five-year professional, one-time world champion.”
In her entire boxing career to date, Shields has only lost one fight when she was an amateur, in 2012, and that came against Marshall, who has never let her forget.
Shields and Marshall have been going head-to-head all year
Their rivalry goes all the way back to 2012
‘What’s not to her? She thinks it means so much to me that she beat me in the amateurs, she almost lost! So, I don’t care, but people keep trying to make me not like her,” she added.
“But in reality, she’s the one who doesn’t like me because she beat me when I was 17 and when I won the Olympics two months later, it showed she was a fluke.
“Then I kept winning and being dominant and it showed that she’s even more of a fluke, and she hates that.”
The British fighter will try to prove that her win over Shields all those years ago was no fluke and improve her perfect record to 13-0 when they finally have a rematch on Saturday night.
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