Inspired by Muhammad Ali, Claressa Shields chasing history at Olympics
RIO DE JANEIRO – Claressa Shields giggled like a schoolgirl as she recalled meeting Floyd Mayweather Jr., for the first time. It was early June and she was in Miami, where Mayweather has a home.
Mayweather, a 1996 Olympic bronze medalist, recently retired as a professional as the best fighter of his generation and one of the greatest in the sport’s history.
He, like Shields, the 2012 middleweight gold medalist, both hail from Michigan. Mayweather is from Grand Rapids and Shields from Flint.
“He’s my idol,” Shields said, grinning.
But her mood quickly turned somber as she recalled the events of that day. It was the day that the legendary Muhammad Ali died and his loss hit Shields hard, even though he’d fought his final fight nearly 14 years before she was born.
She’d met Ali once, in the latter part of his life, and it impacted her tremendously.
“Coming up, he was the first African-American who actually sat out there and told you, back when they were saying ‘Blacks are ugly,’ he was saying, ‘I’m black and I’m pretty and I can fight,’ ” Shields said. “He kind of gave you that belief that you are beautiful, you are brilliant.”
Shields has proven to be brilliant in the ring. She has a 74-1 record in her 10 years as a boxer, since her father, Clarence, relented when she pleaded with him as an 11-year-old to allow her to box.
She won the gold as a 17-year-old high school student in London at the first Olympics in which women boxed. She enters the 2016 Games as the team leader and the overwhelming favorite to win her second gold medal.
Doing that would make her the first American boxer to win two gold medals. Not even the great Ali was able to accomplish that feat.
“I hope I can do him justice when I speak on him and speak about him also when I fight,” Shields said. “Nobody will ever be as great as Muhammad Ali. Ever. But at least I can try to get close.”
Shields has overcome a tremendous amount in her life. She was raped and molested as a child. She lived in a broken home in which her father was in prison for seven years and her grandmother was the only one she could look count on.
She was 11 when she decided she wanted to box. Ali’s daughter, Laila, had taken up the sport a few years earlier, and that managed to get attention from media that largely ignored women’s boxing previously.
Shields was inspired by Laila Ali and begged her father to allow her to box. The first time she went to the gym, the Berston Field House near her home, she sparred with a boy, who hit her in the nose.
She saw stars.
Just a few short years later, she’s the one who is delivering those powerful shots, and has a goal of scoring a knockout en route to winning her second consecutive gold medal.
This, though, is a quest that she says is about more than her bid for history.
Like Ali, she wants to inspire and motivate others. She comes from one of the most depressed cities in the country and had nothing for much of her life, but she made it out and stands on the verge of history.
She’s the American Dream and wants to share that story with anyone who will listen.
“My legacy that I’m fighting for really is to help those kids who feel broken,” she said. “When I was a kid, I didn’t have role models. I didn’t have a lot of hope. The only thing I had was God’s faith. I knew at a young age that God blessed me to do something great. He blessed me to be famous; blessed me to talk to people and say stuff. I didn’t know what it was or what He wanted me to do.
“When I found boxing, it was a place I actually felt loved in. … As far as my legacy, I think God wanted me to spread a message to people without hope to have hope. Once again, it don’t matter where you come from or how you were raised. You can be whatever you want to be.”
What she wants is that second gold medal, which will help push her toward the recognition she craves as the greatest women’s boxer who ever lived.
It’s an ambitious goal, but considering where she’s come from and what she’s already achieved, one would have to be a fool to bet against her.
“It would mean a lot [to win another gold], but I think my life is a little bigger than boxing,” Shields said. “But just to actually be able to break records and do something that actually no one has ever done … ”
That’s the stuff of legends. And Claressa Shields has arrived in Rio de Janeiro on the verge of standing shoulder-to-shoulder alongside those legends she admired as a child, so long ago in such a different place.
If things go as the experts expect they will, Shields will soon become a legend herself.
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