Claressa Shields has accomplished a great deal in 10 professional fights.
The two-time Olympic champion defeated Ivana Habazin by a near-shutout 10-round decision to win major titles in a third weight division – junior middleweight – Friday night at Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Shields became the fastest to become a three-division champion. Vasiliy Lomachenko did it in 12 fights.
She had previously won titles at super middleweight and then middleweight before moving down to junior middleweight. She still holds the 160-pound title.
“This feels great. I did it in 10 fights,” Shields said. “Now I’m No. 1, the fastest boxer in history to become a three-division world champion.”
The matchup had generated a lot of attention for the wrong reasons.
Shields (10-0, 2 KOs) was scheduled to make her 154-pound debut against her Croatian rival in August but the fight was postponed after Shields was injured. Then the bout, rescheduled for Oct. 5, was canceled after Habazin’s 68-year-old trainer James Ali Bashir was attacked at the weigh-in the day before the fight. Shields’ brother Artis J. Mack was later arrested on assault charges.
Once the fighters stepped into the ring, however, it wasn’t much of a contest. Shields outboxed, outworked and generally had her way with Habazin (20-4, 7 KOs) from the opening bell.
In the sixth round, a left hook to the body put Habazin down. She was able to get up and continue but, as in the rest of the fight, she landed punches too infrequently to make the fight competitive. She landed only 49 total shots, less than five per round, according to CompuBox.
The judges scored it 100-90, 99-89 and 100-89.
“I just want to become a better fighter,” Shields said. “That’s all. I want to grow women’s boxing. I want to share a card with Deontay Wilder and Errol Spence. Andre Ward said, ‘Sis, take her to the body.’ I was throwing all body shots in the first minute and then boom, she went down.”
Shields has said she plans to give Mixed Martial Arts a try. She might as well. It seems no one in boxing can give her a fight.
In a preliminary bout, rising young welterweight star Jaron Ennis (25-0, 22 KOs) stopped an overmatched Bakhtiyar Eyubov (14-2-1, 12 KOs) 34 seconds into the fourth round of a scheduled 10-round fight.
Ennis battered Eyubov in the opening round, putting the Houston-based Kazakhstani down twice, and never let up. The Philadelphian was pounding his helpless prey when the referee finally decided that he had taken enough punishment and stopped the fight.
Some thought this would be Ennis’ biggest test. If that was a test, the other 147-pounders should be on notice.