After calling off its 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the PFL made a splash last month by inking former UFC heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum to become one of its new signature stars. Turns out, it was just a prelude.
Earlier this week, Claressa Shields – perhaps the best and most well-known female boxer in the world – announced that she’ll be beginning a pro MMA career with the PFL in 2021. According to ESPN’s Brett Okamoto, she won’t be competing in the PFL’s season format, but expects to fight at least twice while continuing to box, with an eye towards taking part in the 2022 PFL season.
Quite simply, this is a massive, massive get for the PFL. Werdum is the most accomplished mixed martial artist that the organization has ever signed, but Shields has become a relatively well-known mainstream sports figure over the last decade, and could be a key towards getting some new eyes on the promotion. Most people who will watch Werdum’s fights are the types of hardcore MMA fans that would watch the PFL regardless. That might not be so with Shields.
Shields is one of the most accomplished boxers in the world, having won two Olympic gold medals – the first, in 2012, came when she was just 17 years old – and has since gone onto an undefeated professional career, where she’s reigned as the undisputed world middleweight champion since last year. But even at the top level, women’s boxing doesn’t provide the same kind of exposure that mixed martial arts can. And still just 25 years old, she’ll become one of the most high-profile boxers to ever defect to MMA.
MMA’s history is filled with well-known pro pugilists attempting to boost their legacies by dominating in a different arena. One of the standout sights of the very first UFC event was a well-respected cruiserweight contender named Art Jimmerson, seemingly befuddled by the rules of a brand-new sport, wearing just one boxing glove on his left hand. He lasted two minutes before he went down in history as the first victim of Royce Gracie‘s rise to dominance.
In 2010, legendary former middleweight champ James Toney signed with the UFC at the age of 42 and after over 80 professional bouts. The deck was stacked against him from the beginning – he was matched up with Randy Couture, the Hall of Famer and former two-division UFC champ. I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that Toney was out of his depth, as Couture took him down with ease and locked in an arm-triangle choke for a first-round win.
On the flipside, you have Ray Mercer‘s brief dalliance in MMA in 2009. Like Shields, Mercer was a former Olympic gold medalist who became a world champion as a pro. In 2009, at the age of 48, Mercer signed up for a fight with Tim Sylvia, who had only two years before held the UFC heavyweight championship. Back in the day – really, before the Toney-Couture fight – when people would talk about a boxing champ fighting mixed martial artists, they’d envision the boxer using their incredible power to knock everyone out with a single punch. This is the one time that actually happened:
As it turns out, Sylvia was pretty washed, and everyone kinda forgets that this happened. The history of big-name boxers in MMA is full of one-offs or brief runs like this. Very, very few times has a successful boxer actually committed themselves to MMA in any real way.
The obvious exception to that is Holly Holm, who could prove to be a illuminating example for Shields to follow. Holm was one of the best and most successful female professional boxers of all time when she began a pro mixed martial arts career in 2011, at the age of 29. Although she continued to box professionally for the first couple years of her MMA career, by 2013 she was fighting MMA full-time.
Holm, of course, became the woman who unseated Ronda Rousey to win the UFC bantamweight title in 2015, and still today is one of the top 135-pound contenders in the world. Still, the comparison isn’t one-to-one between her and Shields. Holm had a relatively extensive kickboxing background even before her pro boxing career, and has used that experience extremely well in MMA.
She also already had extensive ties to one of MMA’s premier camps. Holm’s first kickboxing coach, back when she was 16 years old, was Mike Winkeljohn, the “Wink” in Albuquerque’s famed Jackson Wink MMA. Holm trained at Jackson Wink throughout most of her boxing career, long before she ever stepped into a cage. Holm was no complete stranger jumping feet-first into an unfamiliar sport. She knew a thing or two.
By comparison, Shields is a babe in the woods. Shields has been training exclusively in boxing since a young age, and has no such ties to an established camp. According to Okamoto’s article, she’s done a couple jiu-jitsu classes and started some wrestling work, and video came out of her in February doing some kicks for the first time.
Still, it’s going to take a lot more work, and the guidance of a legit camp, to turn Shields into real mixed martial artist so quickly. She’ll be following the same template PFL put together for judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison, who debuted in 2018 and the next year was their lightweight champion. But, as we’ve seen time and again, judo is a background that translates much easier to MMA than boxing. The PFL will undoubtedly give her light competition her first year, but if Shields follows that plan, she’ll be contending with Harrison by 2022. That’s a tall task.
At just 25 years old, Shields has all kinds of time to settle into her new career, and the PFL is a good fit. They aren’t going to provide competition that should prove too daunting right away, and they’re the only major promotion that offers a women’s 155-pound division – as Shields boxed at 165 pounds, it won’t be too big a drop. If she has designs on UFC stardom someday, she’ll have to proceed to 145 or even 135 pounds, but the PFL lightweight division should provide a nice segue.
We’ll find out pretty quick whether Shields has actually committed to being a real mixed martial artist or whether she’s still just a boxer doing some play-acting. Either way, it’s another reason to look forward to 2021. Who thought the PFL would get this interesting?
The Big Fight 