Claressa Shields
Claressa Maria Shields (born March 17, 1995) is an American professional boxer. She has held multiple world championships in three weight classes, having reigned as the undisputed female middleweight champion of the world since 2019; the unified WBC and WBO light middleweight titles since January 2020; and previously the unified WBC, and IBF female super middleweight titles from 2017 to 2018. Shields currently holds the record for becoming a two and three-weight world champion in the fewest professional fights. As of May 2020, she is ranked as the world's best active female middleweight and seventh best active female, pound for pound, by BoxRec.
Shields is one of only seven boxers in history, female or male, to hold all four major world titles in boxing—WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO—simultaneously, along with Bernard Hopkins (2004–2005), Jermain Taylor (2005), Cecilia Brækhus (2014–), Terence Crawford (2017), Oleksandr Usyk (2018–2019), and Katie Taylor (2019–).
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In a decorated amateur career, Shields won gold medals in the women's middleweight division at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, making her the first American boxer—female or male—to win consecutive Olympic medals. Shields was the youngest boxer at the February 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials, winning the event in the 165 lb (75 kg) middleweight division. In May, she qualified for the 2012 games, the first year in which women's boxing was an Olympic event, and went on to become the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in boxing. In 2018, the Boxing Writers Association of America named her the Female Fighter of the Year.
