Claressa Shields is taking home even more than a second gold medal from Rio.
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“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s next”.
She also became the first USA boxer in 112 years to win two Olympic gold medals. He won six in Rio, five of them gold to increase his Olympic-record gold total to 23 and his overall total to 28. Shields has also spoken out about being sexually assaulted as a child by three men close to her family-none of whom was ever prosecuted, according to Shields in a 2015 interview with Yahoo Sports.
Shields told NPR, “Everybody was saying, ‘You should be signed with Nike, you should be on a Wheaties box, how come you aren’t in this magazine?’ It got to the point where I just shut everybody out”.
And Shields proved invincible.
Still very game yet now, more cautiously, Fontijn approaches Shield back to the center of the ring. She slipped artfully under Fontijn’s swings, bobbing her head and feinting. Mossely sprinted toward her man and made a golden leap into Yoka’s massive arms, just as she did after her victory.
“I don’t really let anything be pressure to me”, Shields said. “I guess I can blame it on my upbringing and where I’m from, but at the end of the day, we’re all fighters no matter where we come from”. She performed a cartwheel in the ring, then took a victory lap with the American flag on her back. Sadly for Claressa Shields, endorsements have just not come her way. She split from her longtime coach, Jason Crutchfield, who had coached her when she started boxing at 11 and had been a father figure. Shields has spoken about being sexually abused as a child.
“The last round was like: ‘Hey, you want to fight, you think you can beat me, OK let’s go.’ She’s powerful and I’m like, ‘What you going to do about that?,’ ” said the champion. “I want to give people just a little bit of hope”.
Shields is the sixth American to win a Val Barker Trophy, but the first since Roy Jones Jr.in the 1988 Seoul Games. I actually could have stopped her, but I was having so much fun, I was like, ‘Why do that?’ Your life is different, you make your decisions and you decide what to do. “So what’s the problem?”
In the third round and again later, Shields showed her unconcern with being hit by Fontijn, dropping her gloves to her waist so she could wind up big punches. She returns to the Olympics now as the favorite, and her placement in the middleweight final has met many predictions. I look forward to seeing what I can do. “One, I want to show that women boxers need to be respected on an amateur and professional level. I’m telling myself to focus”. Whenever I saw my mom, I asked her if I could get a silky straight weave, instead of my normal braids. She said she wanted to prove her championship was no fluke in the first year that women’s boxing was contested in the Olympics. No deal with Nike.
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The jab wasn’t the only thing she had mastered growing up with one parent in jail and the other unable to care for her. For a reminder of what was at stake, all they had to do was watch their counterparts on the women’s side fight past the Dutch team for bronze Saturday after a similarly disheartening loss kept them from playing for gold.
