SAN ANTONIO – Claressa Shields is set for a rematch, even if not the one that everyone expected.
The three-division champ and reigning undisputed middleweight queen will return to the United States for her next title defense. It will come in a rematch versus Hanna Gabriels, the only fighter to knock down Shields as the two will meet atop a June 3 DAZN show from Little Ceasars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.
Shields—the fighting pride of Flint, Michingan—returns to her home state as a two-time undisputed middleweight champion, having gathered back all of the divisional hardware after a ten-round win over England’s Savannah Marshall last October 15 at The O2 in London. Their long-desired grudge match saw Shields win back the WBO title she previously vacated while also avenging the lone defeat of her boxing lifetime. Marshall outpointed Shields in the preliminary round of the 2012 World Amateur Championships.
Shields went on to capture the first of her two Olympic Gold medals later that year and repeated the feat in 2016 Rio. She has since established herself as the pound-for-pound queen and settled up a decade-long rivalry in her victory over Marshall (12-1, 10KOs). Their terrific action fight came with a rematch clause, which Marshall sought to exercise only for the fight to not materialize.
Shields—self-proclaimed and celebrated by many others as the ‘GWOAT’ (Greatest Woman Of All Time)—will instead run it back with Costa Rica’s Gabriels (21-2-1, 12KOs), the current WBA light heavyweight and WBC heavyweight titlist who will drop back down to middleweight.
Gabiels has only fought three times since her June 2018 defeat to Shields, a fight where she scored a first-round knockdown but was otherwise outclassed in their ten-round bout at Masonic Temple in Detroit. Gabriels dropped down to junior middleweight, where regained her WBA title in January 2019 and defended later that year.
A drastic move well up the scale saw Gabriels weigh 177 ¼ pounds in a two-division title winning effort in a second-round stoppage of Martha Lara Gaytan in April 2021, her last fight to date. She signed with the since-disbanded Probellum, though a fight never came of the arrangement.
Shields has won titles at super middleweight, middleweight and junior middleweight. She is the only three-time undisputed champion in the four-belt era, having done so twice at middleweight.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox