Claressa Shields made history again on Saturday night at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit when she moved up two weight classes to challenge and defeat Canadian Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to win the WBC women’s heavyweight championship and the vacant WBO light heavyweight championship after a second-round technical knockout.
The 29-year-old Shields, a native of Flint, Michigan, and two-time Olympic gold medalist (2012 and 2016) in the middleweight division, who is currently the reigning undisputed women’s middleweight world champion, won the 15th and 16th titles of her career in beating 29-year-old Lepage-Joanisse. In the victory, she became only the second boxer in the last century to win both a middleweight and heavyweight championships, joining Roy Jones Jr., who accomplished the feat when he defeated John Ruiz in 2003 to win the WBA heavyweight championship.
“I saw her corner stand up after the knockdown,” said Shields (15-0, 3 KOs). “The fight was over, but I guess the referee wanted me to throw one more right hand to put her down. I put her down three times.”
Shields gave a quick recap of the short fight, which lasted less than six minutes.
“I only hit her with two punches in the first round, and I remember a hook hit her, and I said, ‘Know what, I knew I was strong in camp, but I’m super strong tonight,’” she said. “Maybe I can stay at heavyweight if I’m going to be this strong in the ring.”
Her next move is yet to be determined.
“You have so many world champions at heavyweight, but I’m the cash cow,” she said. “Wherever I campaign, I can find a fight. I’m going to talk to my team and decide if we want to go down and defend my middleweight titles or stay at heavyweight and chase more world titles.”
Fighting near her hometown was motivation for arguably the best women’s boxer of all-time and she directly addressed the crowd after her win.
“I’m not going to lie, Detroit, you all showed up,” she exclaimed. “I can’t thank you enough for coming out and spending your hard-earned money.”
Belal Muhammad upset Leon Edwards in the main event of UFC 304 with scores of 48-47, 49-46, and 48-47 to win the UFC welterweight championship by unanimous decision on Saturday at the Co-op Live arena in Manchester, England to become the first Palestinian champion in UFC history.
Terence Crawford, who joined Shields in becoming the second person to become undisputed in two divisions in the four-belt era, will once again dare to be great when he moves up to junior middleweight to challenge Israil Madrimov for his WBA junior middleweight championship and the vacant WBO interim junior middleweight title. Crawford last fought in July 2023, when he defeated Errol Spence Jr.
Also on the card, Andy Ruiz battles Jarrell Miller and Jared Anderson takes on Martin Bakole both of which are 10 round heavyweight heavyweight fights, Isaac Cruz defends his WBA junior welterweight championship against Jose Valenzuela, and David Morrell challenges Radivoje Kalajdzic for the vacant WBA light heavyweight championship.