While she is dominant every time she steps into the ring, the Olympic Games is about much more than boxing to Shields.
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So after pounding her way to a one-sided victory over the Netherlands’ Nouchka Fontijn in the women’s middleweight boxing final, mounting the medal podium and having the gold hung around her neck for the second time in four years, Shields unzipped the left pocket of her warmup jacket, pulled out the medal she won four years ago in London and draped that across her chest as well.
Claressa Shields has done the unprecedented, and in the process, established her name as one of the greatest – maybe the greatest – female boxers in history.
The reigning world amateur and Pan American Games champion also ran her amateur record to 77-1 and remains unbeaten since winning at the 2012 London Games.
Shields shook and shimmied before she took her triumphant step on the medal stand.
The Flint, Michigan, native’s self-assured comments echoed similar statements made by gymnast Simone Biles 10 days earlier.
“After I won a gold medal [in 2012] and I got home, my gold medal didn’t really mean a lot to the media and, I guess, to the boxing world either”, Shields told the Washington Post.
“I will never box an AIBA competition again”, he vowed.
Snyder is the second straight American wrestler to win Olympic gold in his weight class. Shields defeated Nouchka Fontijn of the Netherlands in the gold medal bout Sunday afternoon in Rio. “Not APB, not WSB, not world championships or Olympic Games”.
She left her seat and rushed toward the stairs before pausing on the steps to hear the decision announced to the crowd.
As a child, she was molested and raped, but “channeled all that anger into boxing, and that’s why I’m so successful at it”, she told ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue 2016.
Stevenson’s loss by split decision in Saturday’s gold medal bout shook Shields.
Two Olympics, two gold medals.
Crutchfield shared the same level of excitement as everyone else for her victory but still hopes she gets more national exposure for her historic performance. He dropped the first round to Aloian before he rebounded to sweep the scorecards over the final two rounds. He will have to settle for bronze, as he finished third behind gold-medal victor Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya (2:08:44) and silver-medalist Feyisa Lilesa of Ethiopia (2:09:54).
– The United States dominated the overall medal count with 121, finishing first overall in each category.
“The last round was like, “Hey, you want to fight, you think you can beat me, okay let’s go”.
Azerbaijan’s Lorenzo Sotomayor and Fazliddin Gaibnazarov of Uzbekistan were next in the ring in pursuit of the Men’s Light Welterweight (64kg) title.
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Shields was fantastic in her repeat bid. “When everybody thought Shields had become rich, there she was, going to a collection agency to pay her mother’s past-due water bill”. Fontijn offered little resistance and the round served as little more than a coronation for the American face of women’s boxing. Those sponsorship deals would bring money – money that could help both Shields’ training and help her family.
