The best American heavyweight is a woman named Claressa
When we think of great American heavyweights, we immediately think of "The Greatest." We then think of the others. We think of "The Brown Bomber" and "The Rock." We think of "Jersey Joe" and "Smokin’ Joe." We think of "The Galveston Giant" and "The Manassa Mauler." We think of "Sonny," or "The Big Bear." We think of "Big George." We think of "The Easton Assassin." We think of "Iron Mike", "The Real Deal" and "Big Daddy." We think of strong men, dominant men, violent men. We think of men who had the ability to unite a nation and break faces. We think of proud men — American men.
We also think of the men not quite great enough to be identified by just a nickname, but still great enough to exist and thrive in the eras in which the more iconic heavyweight champions reigned. These men played their part, and would all reign today, and it is only by identifying their deficiencies that we understand the greatness of the ones who dominated. It is then we understand what makes a truly great American heavyweight: The personality, the singularity, a certain je ne sais quoi.
In 2026, we look for the same traits, only the talent pool is shallower and the search therefore broadened. Now we find these traits not in American men so much, but in a woman: Claressa Shields.
Not only is Shields, 17-0 (3 KOs), the reigning WBC, IBF and WBO women’s heavyweight champion, but she is the single American heavyweight currently in possession of a world title. She is also a two-time Olympic gold medalist — 2012 and 2016 — and the self-proclaimed “Greatest Woman of All Time,” or “GWOAT,” which means the idea of continuing a heavyweight lineage comes as neither a shock nor a heavy burden for Shields to bear.
Ask her and she’ll tell you she is better equipped than many of her male counterparts to carry the torch. Unlike them, she has the skills to be dominant, as proven by her Olympic gold medals and 17 professional wins, and is seemingly without equal. Prior to her move to heavyweight, Shields had won world titles at super welterweight, middleweight, super middleweight and light heavyweight, and was seldom troubled, never mind close to losing. That’s what enables her to now walk and talk the way she does as a heavyweight. It’s why, at the age of 30, she already has a documentary ("T-Rex") as well as a feature film ("The Fire Inside") about her life. It’s why, back in November, she announced an $ 8 million contract with Wynn Records and Salita Promotions which will map out the next two years of her fighting career.
That deal, the most lucrative in women’s boxing history, arrives at a time when Shields’ singularity has never been more apparent or important. In much the same way her rise as a “great American heavyweight” is inflated somewhat by the death of the “great American heavyweight” in the men’s game, Shields’ ability to keep calling her own shots and be her own boss resonates louder by virtue of so many of her peers signing with Jake Paul and his Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) outfit. In fact, in recent years MVP has become a one-stop shop for women’s boxing, which is not only a testament to MVP’s investment in the sport’s women, but a sign that only a few women in boxing have the power and confidence to lead, not follow.
One of those women is Claressa Shields.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what those girls have done,” she tells Uncrowned. “I could have done the same thing [signed with MVP], but I just like knowing that when I accomplish something it’s because I did it. I don’t like feeling like someone else will get all the credit for my hard work.
“I don’t mind having a partner. Salita Promotions has been one of my biggest partners over the last nine years. He [Dmitriy Salita, Shields’ promoter] may have not understood my vision as far as the beauty and strength, but he definitely understands it now. I know when I first pushed my image to him, he was like, ‘Claressa, I don’t know.’ But I was like, ‘No, trust me, this is it.’”
Dmitriy Salita may not have understood the vision at first, but he did understand boxing and boxers. Salita himself was a former pro, of course, and was once a regular on the New York fight scene from around 2004 until he retired in 2013. He even boxed for a world title against Amir Khan in 2009.
More than that, though, Salita knew women’s boxing. He knew, first of all, that it existed and deserved its place — something not everybody in boxing wanted to acknowledge at the time — and he knew what it was like for a female trying to make her way in the sport in the late nineties and early aughts. He knew this primarily because of his close relationship with one Kisha Snow, a female heavyweight Golden Gloves champion who “used to knock men out in sparring” at Brooklyn’s Starrett City Boxing Club. That was where Salita and Snow both learned to box and where they often hung out. It was there Salita, a white Jew from Ukraine, saw how much harder Snow, a Black girl from New York, had to work just to be seen and heard.
By the time Salita then encountered Claressa Shields, shortly after her professional debut in 2016, he carried some of that experience with him. He remembered Snow, his “big sister.” He remembered how she had been treated. He remembered how, in a fairer world, she should have been treated.
“When I first met Claressa, I drove down to Berston Field House with flowers and a box of chocolates and we both laughed about it,” says Salita. “But we got along great.
“On the surface we come from two very different backgrounds, but if you look behind the curtain, not really. My family emigrated from Odessa, Ukraine to Brooklyn, New York, and we were on welfare food stamps. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment and had nothing. All the kids at school made fun of me.”
Shields was born and raised in Flint, Michigan, home of the southpaw Chris Byrd, one of the last American world heavyweight champions. She was introduced to boxing by her father, Clarence, who was in prison from the time Claressa was 2 to 9 years old. According to Clarence, who fought in some underground leagues, boxing was a men’s sport and no place for girls, be it his own or someone else’s. He didn't properly meet Claressa until she was 9 and he didn't relent and allow her to box until she turned 11.
By then Shields had already had her fair share of fights. Even just getting to the age of 11 had been a battle, what with one parent in jail and the other, her mother Marcella, addicted to drugs and alcohol. While at home, Claressa was known to skip meals to allow her siblings the chance to eat, as well as sleep on the floor because she was without a bed. She also says she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend at the age of 5, though was not believed when she later relayed the traumatic experience to her mother. That led to Shields moving out of the family home to go live with her grandmother; one of many key decisions in her young life.
“I’ve always had to make decisions for my life, and I’ve made pretty good decisions since the age of 13,” says Shields. “But I’m also the kind of person who says, ‘Look, whatever choices I make, I can live with them.’ I think a lot of people in this life need to learn that. Whether the decision is good or bad, you need to learn how to live with it and roll with the punches.
"I was taught to lie in the bed that you make and that’s what I do. I really have no excuses for who I am or how I am. Running from Flint definitely helped mold me, but I just think I’m one of the most resilient, strong and powerful women that I’ve ever met. I continue to grow as I get older.”
If there’s any hint of pain in Shields’ voice, it is soon overpowered by the strength in it. In fact, there is a hardness to Shields which, although in keeping with what people expect from heavyweight boxers, is perhaps less in keeping with what they expect from women. As such, Shields, like Snow before her, has to work that much harder and do that much more — to be respected, to be liked.
She makes no apologies for speaking her mind, however, nor will she feign weakness for the purpose of enhancing her likability. This, after all, is not a popularity contest. This is boxing. This is her world. In the ring, Shields feels safe, untouchable, herself. In the ring, there is nobody better equipped to protect Claressa Shields than Claressa Shields.
I just think I’m one of the most resilient, strong and powerful women that I’ve ever met. I continue to grow as I get older.Claressa Shields
“With me being the oldest girl out of my siblings, and my brother going to prison, I had to look out for myself and my siblings,” she says. “When you have an upbringing like I had, and people aren’t really taking care of you the way they’re supposed to, and you don’t have really great parents, you learn early on that nobody’s going to give you nothing. If nobody’s going to give you nothing, how are you going to have something? The only way for you to have something is to get out there and get it.
“I really respect people who go out there and get it when the odds are stacked against them. I look at someone like Terence Crawford. People had so much disrespect for him early on, but he just continued to press forward. He didn’t let anybody else’s doubts affect him, and he then proved his greatness to the world. That’s kind of the same thing I’m doing. There have been so many rumors — ‘Claressa can’t sell tickets; nobody wants to watch her fight’ — but I’m one of the only females who has been able to do it with a small promoter and sell out arenas and make sure I’m part of history.”
There is a sense with Shields that much of her boasting, including the “GWOAT” nickname, stems from her having to be her own cheerleader growing up, and having to make up for an absence of support by overcompensating with self-love once she understood what the concept meant.
If that translates as remotely arrogant, or unbecoming of a young woman in the spotlight, so be it. She has surely earned the right.
“It takes outspoken, strong leaders to make social change,” says Salita. “Muhammad Ali is one example of that and there are many others too. These people use their platform to make the world a better and more equal place. If Claressa was quiet and tame, none of this would happen. She is who she is and she’s got the credentials to back it up.
“Claressa’s success has had a massive impact on the growth of women’s boxing in the United States. She was the first woman to headline an event on premium cable television, which was Showtime, and since then women have started to get the recognition they deserve.
“Also, if you think about it, she’s currently the only American heavyweight champion of the world. That’s a title that always belonged in America. I know she’s a woman and it’s different, but it’s quite incredible that she’s now a dominant heavyweight figure.
“She is, I think, the right person at the right time when, socially, we are ready to accept and celebrate a woman who is a boss outside the ring and a boss inside the ring.”
In her role as “boss,” Shields knows any decision she makes in the ring or in business will be considerably easier than the decisions she had to make as a young girl in Flint, when she was conditioned to believe she would never be a boxer, much less a boss. Even so, there will still be big decisions. Adult decisions. Career decisions. Financial decisions.
One such decision arrived last summer, in fact, when Shields, having just beaten Lani Daniels, became a free agent for the first time in her career.
“I have been with Claressa since her second professional fight, and throughout our time together we’ve had various contract extensions,” says Salita. “But she had never really become a free agent and explored the market until after her fight in July. She spoke with everybody: MVP, Matchroom [Boxing], others.
“Claressa and I are friends, we’ve known each other for about 10 years, so I obviously felt some level of uncertainty. But I really believed what we offered Claressa was the best. With a superstar like Claressa, first you pay them because you believe in them. Then the superstar becomes the franchise and they pay you.”
In the end, Shields signed an $ 8 million, two-year deal with Wynn Records and Salita Promotions before embarking on a whistle-stop tour of countless news studios in the U.S. to announce it. It was, she proclaimed, the “most lucrative deal in women’s boxing” — and she was right, too.
Sometimes a boast can also be a fact. Often with Shields that seems to be the case.
If nobody’s going to give you nothing, how are you going to have something? The only way for you to have something is to get out there and get it.Claressa Shields
“I know a lot about the boxing business these other girls don’t know,” she says. “I know how to build my brand, I know what I stand for, and I know what’s good for my brand and what’s bad. I’ve mastered brawn and beauty. Early in my career, I don’t think people saw the beauty in me that I saw and knew was there. But then I found a way to put it at the forefront. Now people see the strength and they see the beauty, also. That’s done a lot for my career.
“I have to do it my own way. I can’t do it like nobody else because there’s only one Claressa Shields. When God has chosen you to do something, He has chosen you. I knew that when I turned pro, I would be the first woman to make a million bucks. I knew it. Even though women hadn’t made anything close to that at the time, I knew I would be the one if I stuck to my guns. Now I’m selling out 16,000-seat arenas and all my fights are big events.”
Her next fight, a third defense of her heavyweight titles, takes place this Sunday at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. Opposing Shields will be unified super middleweight world champion Franchon Crews-Dezurn, someone Shields knows well. They boxed for the first time in the amateur ranks, then made their professional debuts against one another in 2016. That was a fight Shields won over four rounds. Since then, the pair have enjoyed contrasting levels of success, fame and fortune. Crews-Dezurn, older by eight years, went on to become champion of the world, while Shields did both that and more.
Given all that, you would expect a trailblazer like Shields to receive only praise for her achievements. Yet monitor her interactions on social media for any length of time and you will soon discover that she is not only divisive, but a target — for fans and for fighters.
Happy to engage, Shields will, in the tradition of American heavyweights of old, use trash talk to motivate herself and remind her audience how great she is. The only difference perhaps is that Shields, a heavyweight champion in 2026, campaigns at a time when the audience is granted the platform and license to shout back and say to her all the things she once heard from others — whether at home or at school — growing up. This lands Shields in a rather difficult place. On the one hand, she feels as though she has won, with all the belts and medals to prove it. On the other hand, the nature of the world — and the toxicity of social media — means that sometimes the illusion of community Shields experiences as a successful world champion bears an unnerving resemblance to the community she left behind as a young girl. People then wonder why the “T-Rex” — the old nickname Shields no longer employs — occasionally bites.
“People can be whoever they want to be on social media, but I think I’m one of the few people who are just themselves on there,” she says. “That’s what makes it hard for me, that I’m not faking it or portraying myself to be someone I’m not. I don’t mind arguing with people on social media. Sometimes it’s annoying because I have a different stardom than other fighters and my brand is bigger than boxing now. But sometimes it’s actually funny. When you’re training two or three times a day, and you have a bit of downtime, it’s good to have people bothering you online.
“The thing is, you can write anything online — literally anything — and the world can see it. You can go on YouTube and make up these AI videos and spread lies. Just three weeks ago, up on YouTube, I saw a video that said I was pregnant. I’m watching this and am like, ‘How am I pregnant? I’ve got a f***ing six-pack now and am fighting in three weeks. Where is this coming from?’
“But that’s what the internet is. It’s just made-up mumbo jumbo with a whole bunch of haters. There’s a reason why they call followers ‘followers.’ It’s because all they do is follow people. They’re not leaders. You’re rarely going to see people who are leaders online. But I’m a leader and these people are my followers. They’re just hating on me because I’m the 'Greatest Woman of All Time.'”
With not even a knowing wink, or so much as a blink, she delivers that line — the closer — as though merely saying her name.
Perhaps, having said it so often, the two are now interchangeable — name and nickname. Perhaps, when you have said it enough, through good times and bad, when celebrating and when crying, and before sleeping and waking up, what is considered a boast to the ears of the world is simply self-motivation to yours. Or perhaps, as was true of others, time will prove that Claressa Shields is exactly who and what she says she is. It will prove her right and the haters wrong. It will prove that a nickname, rather than just something you choose, is something a great heavyweight becomes.
