The first time Claressa Shields and Maricela Cornejo went head-to-head, they co-starred in a YouTube video.
When it hit the internet in 2019, Shields was already a two-time Olympic gold medalist with several professional titles, including the undisputed middleweight championship. Cornejo was a seven-year veteran, but still building an online brand that encompassed boxing, fashion, fitness and self-help.
Their conversation, which appeared on Cornejo’s YouTube channel, touched on boxing, of course, but also on the two women’s shared histories as survivors of childhood sexual assault. The interview showcased both women as vulnerable, tender, supportive and sisterly; professional colleagues with the makings of close friends.
On Saturday in Detroit, Shields and Cornejo will meet as opponents, with Shields’s undisputed middleweight title at stake. The pairing highlights the close-knit world of elite women’s boxing, where bitter rivalries abound, but where boxers can be each other’s friends, fans, training partners and adversaries, often in fairly quick succession.
“If anybody wants to get in the ring and fight for my belts, I’m going to put all that friendship to the side,” said Shields, who is 13-0 with two knockouts. “This is prizefighting. It’s not friend fighting.”
The Shields-Cornejo title fight, which will headline a card at Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit, is the highest-profile women’s bout of early 2023, and a follow-up to the blockbuster events that vaulted women’s boxing into the spotlight last year.
Last April, a lightweight title bout between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano sold out Madison Square Garden. Taylor won a decision in a raucous brawl that drew 1.5 million viewers to the streaming platform DAZN, which will also show Saturday’s bout. Six months later, in October 2022, Shields defeated Savannah Marshall in a high-stakes, high-octane title bout in London. A reported two million viewers watched that fight.
Organizers of both events claim each was the richest bout in women’s boxing history, and most years either matchup would have stood alone as the single most significant women’s bout on the schedule. They featured big names, full arenas, competitive action and, not coincidentally, sustained promotion leading into fight night.
