Claressa Shields Has No Regrets About Taking MMA Fights, Open To Doing Another With PFL
Claressa Shields has no regrets about taking MMA fights.
Shields is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and boxing world champion surprised many when she signed with PFL to do MMA. In her first fight, she picked up a stoppage win over Brittney Elkin in a fight she was losing and in her second fight, she suffered a loss to Abigail Montes in October of 2021 and hasn’t fought since.
Although the loss was tough for Shielda to deal with, she says she has no regrets about losing or taking a fight.
“I don’t regret doing MMA,” Shields said on The MMA Hour. “I’m 1-1, I lost a fight — a split decision that could have went either way against an opponent who’d been doing MMA her whole life. So the fact that I was doing MMA only a year, trying to learn the ground game and trying to learn some wrestling and add it to my boxing, and then to lose a split — like, I didn’t get knocked out, I didn’t get armbarred, I didn’t get submitted.
“I just lost a split decision. I don’t regret it at all. It actually made me a better fighter. It showed me what I already knew — I can do whatever I put my mind to,” Shields continued. “I beat a girl who was a brown belt and had been doing MMA for 13 years. I went in there and I was able to beat her, so I just know that I’m dangerous whether it’s in a boxing ring or it’s in a cage.”
Although Claressa Shields has no regrets about taking MMA fights, she has yet to fight since the loss and many wondered if she would fight again. According to Shields, she says she is actually in talks with PFL to get another MMA fight as she has been training and improving her skills.
“I would like to do MMA again,” Shields said. “We are in talks with PFL now to try to see what the plan is, but I would like to be given the right amount of time to train and to learn the craft of MMA, to have me a solid team behind me, because I’ve just been winging it.
“I went to JacksonWink and I trained with them, and they were a great team. I did a lot of jiu-jitsu training, a lot of wrestling. But it just was like, you get a 30-minute session, a 45-minute session — you don’t really get like the full [experience]. Like, I go to the gym and I don’t train less than three hours for boxing, and I’ve been doing boxing for 17 years,” Shields concluded. “So I feel like in MMA, I want to have that same kind of routine in order for me to just learn those arts, because I’m far behind the other girls, but my boxing gives me a little lift. But if I can’t be on my feet, then we have to figure out something else. So I just want to learn those arts to where it can give me a better chance at winning. I’m not afraid to do MMA. I’ve already done it. I just want to — I like to win. I like to win fights.”
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