\n<\/p>\n
Six months before the 2012 Olympics, American Claressa Shields took her first step on the path to greatness.<\/b><\/p>\n
Aged only 16, Shields beat national champion Franchon Crews-Dezurn, who was eight years her senior, at the US Olympic trials.<\/p>\n
Shields would go on to win gold at the Games in London and earn a further two victories over Crews-Dezurn in the amateur ranks.<\/p>\n
A fourth successive win followed when they met on their professional debuts in 2016 – and the pair are set to reignite their rivalry on Saturday when Shields defends her undisputed heavyweight status.<\/p>\n
“Me and Franchon have always said that for some reason we are always intertwined in each other’s lives,” Shields told BBC Sport. <\/p>\n
“If you take it back to when I was 16, she was ranked number one in the country and I was ranked number seven and the people who were ranked lower had to pull out a ball and it would tell you who we were fighting against – I pulled out number one.<\/p>\n
“Now we meet again on the first fight of my major deal.”<\/p>\n
The major multi-fight deal that Shields speaks of was signed with Wynn Records and Salita Promotions in November. <\/p>\n
It is worth a staggering $8m (\u00a36.1m) and also came with an additional $3m (\u00a32.2m) signing-on bonus.<\/p>\n
Those figures are unheard of in women’s boxing but Shields, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, five-weight world champion and three-weight undisputed champion, is no stranger to raising the bar.<\/p>\n
“I have never heard of a man getting that kind of signing bonus. I’ve heard of men getting a $1m (\u00a3739,000) signing bonus but never $3m,” Shields said.<\/p>\n
“I would love to ask ChatGPT, ‘Has a man ever got a $3m signing bonus for a boxing contract?’ <\/p>\n
“My contract now is big overall and I’m getting back paid. When I came out of the Olympics with two gold medals, I should have got a $1m signing bonus for whoever I went with but that didn’t happen.<\/p>\n
“Now it’s years later but I’m getting it all back. I’ve been able to make millions over the past few years.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Six months before the 2012 Olympics, American Claressa Shields took her first step on the path to greatness. Aged only 16, Shields beat national champion Franchon Crews-Dezurn, who was eight years her senior, at the US Olympic trials. Shields would go on to win gold at the Games in London and earn a further two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}