Claressa Shields isn’t interested in getting friendly again with Laila Ali as the pair’s bitter rivalry continues.
The legendary women’s boxing duo are both figures with great parts to play in the sport’s history. But Shields, who is still competing at the top level to this day, feels that she has been more influential and a more impressive athlete than Ali.
Both women are multiple-weight world champions and are considered amongst the best of all time in women’s boxing.
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Laila Ali details Claressa Shields fallout
For years, it seemed that Laila Ali and Claressa Shields had at the very least a mutual respect as two of the greatest fighters of all time. Laila’s grandfather Muhammad Ali was a trailblazer in every way, but she managed to pave her own path in time, taking home titles at ligh-heavyweight and super-middeleweight.
“You can think you can beat me,” Ali told Andre Ward in an episode of the Art of Ward podcast earlier this month. “You can think that, that’s fine, you’re supposed to think that. I’m just saying to start going in on my legacy and what I have and haven’t done and all of these things?
“I was like ‘wow, that’s a lot’. So that’s kind of what happened. I think fans don’t like it because they love both of us, and they want to know why does it have to be this way? That’s pretty much how it happened and there are certain things that are not okay with me.
“It’s hard to come back from those things, but I don’t have any hard feelings against Claressa in general. I’ve got a lot of things going on, you already know, to be worried about any of these young girls like that.
“But at the same time I see that she gets into it like that with a lot of people. She gets into it with a lot of female fighters, a lot of male fighters so obviously that’s a thing for her, hopefully she’ll figure that out because you’re not going to get very far in this life if you continue burning bridges.”
Claressa Shields shuts down talks of a reconciliation with Laila Ali
Claressa Shields isn’t keen on the pair’s reunion too much, either. She reckons that while two women of such calibre shouldn’t be feuding, they might just have to be at odds if their philosophies on the sport stay so radically different.
She told Seconds Out’s Ayman Khan of the feud: “I think sometimes on the internet they post certain clips and I don’t really follow much of Laila Ali and I don’t really speak a lot about her any more. It was more trying to get a fight with her and raise the bar for women’s boxing.
“As far as reconciling? I don’t really care to be friends with her. Me being a woman I feel like we shouldn’t have to be beefed out and at the end of the day, if she chooses not to like me or not be friends with me or forgive this or that, that’s fine with me.
“At the end of the day she had a great career, I have had a great career. She was great in her era I’m great in my era, and we are not ever going to fight and if the opportunity does come where we can get a fight then I will 100 per cent say yes, as long as she agrees.”