Joe Gallagher, manager and trainer of WBO, WBC, IBF junior middleweight champion Natasha Jonas, has confirmed that an offer was presented for a showdown with undisputed middleweight champion Claressa Shields.
Last October, Shields picked up a big win over career rival Savannah Marshall. She was interested in dropping back to 154-pounds to face Jonas, who last year moved up in weight by several divisions to capture three world titles.
Shields had previously been the undisputed world champion at junior middleweight.
However, Gallagher explains that Shields’ handlers – promoter Dmitriy Salita and manager Mark Taffett – did not offer up enough money to make the Shields fight a reality.
“There was an offer on the table,” Gallagher told Sky Sports. “Salita and Mark, they’ve always been pushing for women’s pay and Claressa’s seven-figure sums and raising the bar of women’s boxing… Then to come with the offer that they did do for her to fight Claressa, the money wasn’t worthy of the magnitude of the fight. If the shoe was on the other foot, they would have turned it down. As Tasha said, she’s got three belts. Claressa’s coming down to fight for her old belt and it’s a big fight.
“If I’m selling you a 10 grand car, if I offer you a grand it doesn’t mean you’ve got to take it and that’s the same thing. Like Tasha says, you’ve made me an offer but the offer wasn’t good enough. It’s not in her control, it’s in their control. So if they want to come back and make her a better offer, the fight can be done. You’ve got to understand it from Natasha’s point of view. That’s the biggest, hottest fight to be made in world boxing at the moment, the two in-form fighters. It’s a huge task and challenge for Natasha.”