“London calling to the faraway towns
Now war is declared and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls
London calling, now don’t look to us
Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain’t got no swing
Except for the ring of the truncheon thing.”
–The Clash
After all of the preliminary push and shove had been dispensed with, and the O2 Arena was packed to the rafters with 20,000 fight fans, it turned out to be a great night for a pair of Michigan’s finest female prizefighters on the other side of the pond.
The fight week festivities didn’t fail to entertain, no doubt about that. Mikaela Mayer and Alycia Baumgardner had to be pulled apart on Wednesday and separated again on Thursday before coming to blows on Friday which was also when Claressa Shields flipped off the UK fans while chanting “USA! USA!” It was anybody’s guess what the hell was bound to happen when fight night finally rolled around.
One of the many distinguishing features of Saturday’s all-women’s boxing card in London was the degree of genuine disdain that exists between the two pairs of co-headliners. Cataloging the full litany of invective hurled back and forth by Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall would take an entire team of researchers solely dedicated to this singular task. I did my best to record as much of it as possible for the last several years but simply couldn’t keep up, especially as the slanderous exchanges reached unprecedented levels in recent months.
Two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-division world champion Claressa Shields vowed to gain revenge for her decade’s old loss to Savannah Marshall, her only one inside a boxing ring, by knocking out her British nemesis. Marshall pointed out the obvious, that only two stoppages account for Shields’ dozen professional victories, the last of which occurred over five years ago versus Nikki Adler. Furthermore, Claressa was taken the full distance by their two common opponents, Hannah Rankin and Femke Hermans, both of whom Marshall dispatched before the final bell.
“12-0 as a pro, and you haven’t learned to finish anyone,” scolded the heavy-handed Savannah, with her 83% KO ratio, at Thursday’s final press conference. “That’s concerning, you haven’t learned.” After Shields reversed course by insisting that “knockouts don’t matter,” Marshall coolly responded that “It will matter when you’re on your back, looking at the lights.” Asked by a reporter whether she and Claressa could have been friends in some alternate reality, Marshall responded in the affirmative, sardonically suggesting that the two of them go grab a coffee together afterwards. Shields’ grim expression sufficed for an answer to Savannah’s invite.
Not to be outdone, Mikaela Mayer and Alycia Baumgardner have been plenty busy themselves swapping trash talk during interviews and on their social media platforms since title unification became a tantalizing possibility in the aftermath of Baumgardner’s explosive TKO victory over former WBC/IBO super-featherweight champion Terri Harper last November.
The Shields and Marshall feud, it goes without saying, has a far longer reach than that. Five months more than an entire decade to be precise, dating back to May 14, 2012 at the AIBA World Championships in Qinhuangdao, China when Marshall handed Shields her first and, going into this past weekend, only loss as a boxer both as an amateur and a professional.
Was the win a simple fluke, or did Savannah perhaps benefit from some underhanded chicanery on the judges’ scorecards, as they may have preferred a British representative to vie for the middleweight gold medal at the London Olympics rather than her American counterpart? Did Shields merely suffer an uncharacteristic off night, or was it an open and shut case of biased larceny?
Categorize it however you wish, and Claressa herself has offered up a myriad of alternate takes on the subject with the exception of being legitimately bested by Marshall, there is no denying that this lone loss took up residence in the deepest recesses of Shields’ mind ten years ago and has festered there from that day forward.
Whether she is willing to admit it or not, it’s fairly obvious that the two-time Olympic gold medalist and self-professed GWOAT has been haunted during her waking and nocturnal hours alike for the last ten years by Savannah Marshall as if the ‘Silent Assassin’ were a poltergeist and not a pugilist. Saturday night at the O2 Arena, two weeks before Halloween, Shields finally cast out that ghost, walking out of the London ring with the complete collection of 160-pound championship belts.
We’d all waited this long for the Shields vs. Marshall grudge match to happen, so what was another five weeks? Well, for Savannah and Claressa specifically, not to mention Mikaela Mayer and Alycia Baumgardner and every other woman on the card, there was the matter of having trained and peaked and been optimally ring ready for September 10, only for the postponement to be announced prior to that Friday’s weigh-ins due to the entire nation beginning a ten-day observance of mourning for the loss of Queen Elizabeth II.
Respectfully, the show could not go on under those circumstances. But, at long last, rivalries were renewed, the flapping of gums finally gave way to the throwing of hands, and a new undisputed queen of boxing’s middleweight division was crowned. As a tribute to the long-reigning and recently deceased British monarch, the victorious Shields was additionally awarded a commemorative Elizabethan championship belt designed by the WBC specifically for the occasion.
Before proceeding with this train of thought, we should switch tracks for a quick but necessary detour to address the all-female aspect of the media’s pre-fight coverage and clear up what was a repeated misrepresentation of this event being the first ever occurrence of women occupying each spot on the bill of a boxing show. Taking nothing away from the participants of this weekend’s momentous affair, this simply couldn’t be further from the truth.
Sammy Sanders’ Western Promotions staged the inaugural all-women’s boxing card, a series of world title elimination matches headlined by a lightweight bout between Lady Tyger Trimiar and Carlotta Lee, on February 11, 1979 in Hawthorne, California. Another followed just five months later at the LA Sports Arena with Lady Tyger once again fighting in the main event, this time opposite Ernestine Jones.
In fact, Saturday’s all-women’s show in London wasn’t even the first of its kind as far as the UK is concerned. Sponsored by Barbara Buttrick’s WIBF, York Hall in Bethnal Green hosted an all-female card on February 19, 1994 featuring no fewer than eleven bouts. There have been many more before and since then in several different countries across the globe.
Before Savannah ‘The Silent Assassin’ Marshall there was ‘The Fleetwood Assassin’ Jane Couch, who deserves to be acknowledged as the first officially licensed female boxer in Great Britain after earning the right to fight by overcoming the BBBofC in the court of law.
With that little history lesson out of the way, we can climb back into the time machine, zip ahead to the present day, and resume discussing the current business at hand. Which there is more than enough to sort out. So, without further ado, let’s return to yesterday and pass through the turnstiles of London’s O2 Arena where Claressa Shields avenged her amateur defeat to Marshall by starting strong and exhibiting grace under pressure to withstand a late rally by her power-punching nemesis.
From the outset, Shields sought to negate Marshall’s significant height and reach advantages by breaking past her barrier behind a busy jab, both throwing and landing a multitude of punches once she had invaded Savannah’s personal territory, the most frequent and successful of which were body blows. Shields’ voluminous work rate from uncomfortably close quarters kept Marshall, a typically slow starter and methodical stalker, from boxing at mid-range and looking for opportunities to get the measure of Claressa in order to load up her right hand and tee off with a game-changing or night-ending power shot.
The frustration and frantic pace were exacting a visible toll on Savannah, as she breathed deeply between rounds to take in much-needed oxygen and appeared somewhat flustered that things were not turning out according to plan. A reversal of fortune was carried in on a second wind in the middle rounds, and Marshall not only halted Claressa’s momentum but swung it around in her own favor by using her impressive size to bully Shields from pillar to post.
Whether trapping Shields in the corner or positioning her foe with her back against the ropes, it was bombs away for Savannah as she connected with power punches which Claressa later admitted compromised the sight in her right eye from the sixth round on. Nevertheless, perseverance is something Claressa Shields knows more about than your average person. Sexually assaulted as a little girl, she struggled through a nonverbal and sometimes parentless childhood, and spoke with a pronounced stutter when she did finally begin to communicate.
Decked out in stars and stripes on Saturday night, the waistband of Claressa’s trunks bore the word Cocoa which was the nickname given to Shields as a youngster by her beloved grandmother. Shields stood tall under adverse circumstances yet again, withstanding Marshall’s best efforts and returning fire with a natural born tenacity and a purposeful intent that has been practiced and perfected since taking up boxing sixteen years ago.
After ten rounds of battle, the tension and anticipation inside the O2 hung heavy in the air while the scores were tallied. Claressa Shields became the middleweight division’s undisputed titleholder by slim margins of 97-93 (x2), and 96-94. Savannah Marshall accepted defeat, her first as a professional, with her customary humility, congratulating her conqueror warmly and genuinely. The same could not be said for the competitors in the evening’s co-feature.
The conflict between Mikaela Mayer and Alycia Baumgardner became especially hostile in a personal way, escalating quickly from a perfunctory unification challenge to Mikaela calling Baumgardner a “broke bitch” and Alycia responding with characterizations of Mayer as being coddled as well as burdened by struggling to maintain her weight.
Things got downright ugly at Thursday’s presser, Mayer interpreting Baumgardner’s smirk to mean she was taking this situation lightly, and Alycia responding with incendiary epithets hurled at Mayer the likes of “horse face” and “fucking Karen.” The fuse being lit, Mayer did indeed explode, accusing Alycia of turning the situation into something unnecessarily racial, not unlike the way Savannah Marshall had reacted to questionable comments made by Claressa Shields ahead of the originally scheduled September date when Claressa for some reason felt the need to presume Marshall wished she was black.
During the stare down portion of Friday’s weigh-in, a shove from Baumgardner led to a retaliatory karate kick from Mayer before security intervened. Mikaela later quipped that she couldn’t use her hands because they were holding all her title belts.
Baumgardner, who Mikaela not so affectionately dubbed ‘Bum Bum,’ has implied that Mayer never outgrew her amateur pedigree, leaving her encumbered by a boxing style vulnerable to being exposed by the right fighter as “one dimensional” or, in contemporary parlance, “basic.” It goes without saying that Alycia believed herself to be the chosen one to assume that responsibility. Not only was this a knock on Mayer, but a probably unintentional jab at Mikaela’s lifelong coach, mentor, and father figure Al Mitchell, whose retort took the shape of an ominous warning that Baumgardner “got hell coming.”
When the need to be physically separated when appearing tandemly in public became as obsolete as all the braggadocious cheap shots, hell would freeze over in London as Baumgardner defied the odds, same as she did against Terri Harper last November only this time with the stakes even higher, to stun the boxing world with a split decision victory over Mayer to unify her WBC and IBO super-featherweight belts with Mikaela’s IBF, WBO, and Ring magazine titles.
It wasn’t the back alley brawl we had all been expecting given the gallons of bad blood that has been spilled between the two in the last several months. That said, Baumgardner imposed her will early and often over Mayer, employing her jab both upstairs and directed at Mikaela’s midsection as a calling card for a rather impolite introduction to left leads and hard right hooks which eventually opened a gash over her adversary’s right eye. Fortunately, Mayer had Manny Robles working her corner as cut man, and he was able to stem the flow and keep the wound from becoming a factor as the fight wore on.
Alycia curiously abandoned her jab in the later rounds, allowing Mayer the opportunity to turn the tide with her own. Despite her ring generalship beginning to take command, Mikaela more often than not followed up her frequent jabs with single shots whereas the busier Baumgardner’s punches were let loose in bunches. Even if it was not turning out to be a predictably vicious war of attrition, this more technical back and forth was proving close to call in either gladiator’s favor.
This was evidenced in the split verdict which gave the nod to Alycia Baumgardner courtesy of matching razor thin scores of 96-95 that nullified the 97-93 tally in favor of Mikaela Mayer, who left the ring in disgust without extending an olive branch to her arch rival. For her part, the newly unified 130-pound champion declared that no rematch would be offered to Mayer, as Alycia instead will seek the opportunity to take Hyun Mi Choi’s WBA belt and reign supreme over the super-featherweight division.
The loaded undercard saw Georgia O’Connor outpoint Joyce Van Ee and Shannon Ryan defeat Buchra El Quaissi in the four-round prelims. In the evening’s six rounders, Sarah Liegmann outpointed Bec Connolly, Ginny Fuchs shut out Gemma Ruegg, April Hunter defeated Erica Juana Gabriela Alvarez, Ebonie Jones outpointed Jasmina Nad, Karriss Artingstall decisioned Marina Sakharov, Lauren Price notched a fourth-round stoppage over Timea Belik, and Caroline Dubois scored a TKO win over Milena Koleva in the penultimate stanza.
A jubilant and emotional Claressa Shields broke down in tears during her post-fight interview. Honoring the generations of women before her who paved the way for this night to have been possible, she also recognized Savannah Marshall as a great competitor and worthy adversary. Savannah joined Claressa at center ring to take part in a ceremonial burying of the hatchet with no problem admitting that she lost to the “better fighter.”
Having settled their differences inside the squared circle and hugged things out afterwards, Shields and Marshall kept the possibility open for a rematch or perhaps a trilogy. And maybe, just maybe, these two remarkable women will one day meet up for that cup of coffee.
“London calling, yes I was there too
And you know what they said?
Well, some of it was true
London calling at the top of the dial
And after all this won’t you give me a smile?”
–The Clash
