Claressa Shields knew that labeling herself the Greatest Woman Of All Time in boxing would have its detractors.
Boxing legend, Christy “The Coal Miner’s Daughter” Martin is one of them and she let it be known on the latest episode of the PRITTY Left Hook podcast.
👀"She's just a hater. Biggest hater in women's boxing. Period." — @Claressashields responds to Christy Martin's comments on @shadowleague about her 🔥@RJcliffordMMA @danhardymma @SiriusXMBoxing pic.twitter.com/4YHyzaKrKr
— MMA on SiriusXM (@MMAonSiriusXM) July 24, 2019
However, Shields found out and was asked about it on Sirius XM’s Fight Nation show.
“The woman is a hater. She doesn’t like me because I box better than her,” Shields said. “Her boxing skills and her boxing career aren’t better than mine. Truth be told, when I first turned pro when Showtime was about to have me on and we couldn’t find an opponent, when she found out how much my opponents were making to fight me, Christy Martin wanted to come out of retirement to fight me, even though she knew that she would lose, but she was in dire need of cash.”
Martin won the vacant WBC Women’s super welterweight title in 2009 with a majority decision win over Dakota Stone. She was 41 years old and it was her first world title after already having a lengthy career of 49-5-3.
With only nine professional fights, Shields is already the undisputed middleweight champion of the world and previously held the unified WBC and IBF super middleweight championship.
Male fighter, Vasiliy Lomachenko, who also had a storied amateur career and two Olympic gold medal wins like Shields, became a world champion in his pro debut and is now a three-division world champion in only 14 fights. Lomachenko carries one loss from his second pro fight while Shields is still undefeated.
“She’s mad that I’m making a lot of money and that she never got to make the kind of money i’m making or be the main event on TV like I am in just 9 fights and thats her own problem to deal with. But I’m just sick and tired of her trying to find ways to say that she doesn’t like me or she doesn’t approve of my boxing when I box better than her when i’ve earned it. I’ve earned all my titles and i’m an undisputed champion and she never earned that title. She’s proven over and over again she doesn’t care about women’s boxing because if she did she wouldn’t say stupid things about me.”
Martin was signed to Don King and famously fought on the undercard of the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon match in 1996.
“You don’t have to like the fact that i’m calling out male fighters but lets get one thing understood, I love Triple G, whenever I see Triple G we laugh about things like that. Even with Keith Thurman, I don’t really have the want to fight these fighters but I will do great in a boxing match against them. I just won’t go in there and get knocked out as she would’ve because she didn’t have any boxing skills. Can’t move her head, all she can do is sit there and take punches and if she’s not stronger than a girl she loses.”
Martin fought Laila Ali in 2003 for Ali’s IBA super middleweight title and lost via KO in the fourth round.
“She got her ass whipped up and down and turned all around by Laila Ali advertising all that stuff for years. She can’t say anything about me when I fought against top fighters and she fought against strippers, I mean she put gloves on strippers to fight strippers.”
“Even my team flew her out to my fight against (Christina) Hammer and she still came there being real negative towards me then so I don’t really like Christy Martin and I really wish she would stop speaking on me and that she would tell people the truth, that she’s a hater; biggest hater in women’s boxing, period.”
With fighters like Heather Hardy, accepting Shields as the leader in women’s boxing only time will tell if veterans like Christy Martin will ever come around to her point of view.
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