Claressa Shields is certainly open to a boxing match with current Bellator featherweight champion Cris Cyborg, because she’s had in-ring experience with her in the past.
Fresh off her a split decision win over Kelsey DeSantis this past Saturday at PFL vs. Bellator, Shields gone back-and-forth with Cyborg on social media about a potential boxing match. Should it be booked, Shields feels quite confident that she’d make things look easy.
“Look, I’ll be honest with you, when I sparred against Cris Cyborg in 2018, I took it easy on her,” Shields said Wednesday on The MMA Hour. “I let her and her team doctor up a video to make it look close, but the first and second round, I beat the s*** out of Cris Cyborg. She cannot box, OK? And then we were supposed to work together more, but after I beat her in sparring, she didn’t want to spar no more.
“But I told her, ‘If you ever need me in your camp for boxing, let me know, because I’ll still come and help you. We don’t [have to] spar.’ She never called me. So for her to be saying she’ll knock me out at 147 [pounds], and power this and power that — Cris Cyborg has power in MMA because you have all those different arts you can use. In boxing, Cris Cyborg can’t mess with me on a day that I’m sick with the flu.”
Boxing’s undisputed light middleweight champion, Shields is 14-0 in her professional career, and now 2-1 as a pro MMA fighter. Why things have transitioned from a friendship to a rivalry with Cyborg is a bit unknown to Shields, especially since she claims she tried to set up a boxing match between the two where Cyborg would make a lot of money.
“I don’t know how all of a sudden these girls start beefing with me,” Shields said. “The beef with Cris Cyborg is probably the most shocking and surprising than any other beef that I have.
“It’s because a guy had some money for me and Cris Cyborg to fight — he was speaking of a fight as big as Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou. I said I got the perfect person, I said Cris Cyborg, Amanda Nunes. So I thought about Cris and she was my friend. I hit her up, ‘I got money for us.’ I’m like, ‘Let’s make it happen,’ she’s all like, ‘Oh, thanks for hitting me up, of course I’ll get back with you.’
“All of a sudden — the money is right, everything is good — she’s crying about the weight class. I already told [her] what weight class the fight was gonna be at, 154 [pounds]. Why are you trying to get me to come to 147? Then after that, she talking about she had knocked me out at 147. She was doing this [and that].”
