NEW YORK – Claressa Shields has a suggestion for how to end the United States’ Olympic gold drought: put her back on the national team.
The 30-year-old Shields, who won the last two Olympic golds for the United States, in 2012 and 2016, says she would be open to returning to the amateur ranks for one more run – at the 2028 Los Angeles Games. That is, if USA Boxing would be willing to allow professionals to compete on their team.
“Let me come back. I’m the only one who did it twice,” Shields, 16-0 (3 KOs), said at Tuesday’s media workout at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, New York. “If America wants to get another Olympic gold medal, you put Claressa Shields in the 2028 L.A. Olympics – that’s what you’re doing.”
Currently, USA Boxing bars anyone who has competed as a professional from being licensed as an amateur, though many other countries allow professionals to compete in amateur tournaments. Most notably, Beatriz Ferreira, the current IBF women’s lightweight titleholder, represented Brazil at the 2024 Olympics, earning a bronze in Paris. She won the title last April, and then within a month was competing in an amateur tournament, the Eindhoven Box Cup in the Netherlands, to prepare for the Olympics in July.
While most of the pros who competed in 2024 had just a handful of professional fights, there were some who were more experienced, like the 19-0 Oshin Derieuw, of Belarus, or the 14-0 Bakhodir Jalolov, of Uzbekistan, or the 11-0-1 Estelle Mossely, of France.
The United States has sent pro boxers to the Olympics only once previously, to the Tokyo Games in 2021, after the Americas qualification tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Keyshawn Davis, Troy Isley and Duke Ragan were awarded spots in the one-year-delayed Olympics based on their amateur world rankings.
This Olympics will be the first in which World Boxing will oversee Olympic boxing, after the previous two tournaments were conducted directly by the International Olympic Committee in the wake of the permanent suspension of the scandal-riddled AIBA.
Shields, who will make her first defense of the undisputed heavyweight championship on July 26 against Lani Daniels, says she would be motivated by the prospect of adding another medal to the two she already has featured on the Olympic tattoo on her right bicep. While she would likely have to put her pro aspirations on hold to train with the national team, it’s something she’d be willing to do.
“Everybody wants money, but three Olympic gold medals? I’m already stunting with the two. I’ll change it to three quick,” said Shields.
When Shields first competed in the Olympics as part of the inaugural slew of female boxers, there were just three weight classes to compete in. At Los Angeles 2028, there will be a total of seven women’s weight categories, though the 75kg category she once competed in is now split between the 70kg and 80+kg super heavyweight divisions.
Shields revealed earlier in the week on “The Ariel Helwani Show” that she had received an offer to represent Azerbaijan in the 2020 Olympics, but she rejected the offer, stating that if she was to compete again in the Olympics, she would prefer to do so for the United States. Outside of Shields, the only boxer to win an Olympic gold for the US in the last 29 years is Andre Ward, who won a gold at the 2004 Games in Athens, Greece.
Outside of directly competing, Shields suggested that USA Boxing invite previous medalists to mentor the team, which she believes can help boost the boxers’ mental fortitude.
“USA Boxing needs to invite out the Olympic champions to the guys and girls who want to become Olympic champions,” she said. “I think being an Olympic gold medalist, it’s more about your mental than it is your physical. That’s what’s missing when it comes to USA Boxing. I think I had a different mentality than everyone else, and that’s how I won two Olympic gold medals, which hadn’t been done before.”
One sport Shields won’t be returning to is mixed martial arts. Shields, who has an MMA record of 2-1 in three fights in Professional Fighters League, says she doesn’t have anything left to prove in that sport.
“I did my work there,” said Shields. “I proved everybody wrong, I beat girls that were brown belts, had all this experience on the ground, and now I’m done with MMA and focused on my boxing career.”
