Notebook: Shields-Marshall, Mayer-Baumgardner to share women's mega card

Paul won't wait around for Fury; Quick hits; Show and tell

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While many boxing fans are regularly frustrated by the fights they want to see going unmade, or taking years to make, the same cannot be said of the women’s side of the sport.

In a year which has already seen the much-anticipated fight between two of the pound-for-pound best in undisputed lightweight champion Katie Taylor and seven-division titlist Amanda Serrano sell out New York’s Madison Square Garden and live up to the ample hype with their instant classic on April 30, two more must-see women’s fights are also now officially on the schedule — and on the same card.

The long-awaited showdown between rivals Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall to unify titles for the undisputed middleweight championship was made official at a news conference on Tuesday in London, where the co-feature was also formally unveiled: a three-belt junior lightweight unification fight between WBO/IBF champion Mikaela Mayer and WBC titleholder Alycia Baumgardner.

The card, a collaboration of promoters Boxxer, Salita Promotions and Top Rank, will take place Sept. 10 at The O2 in London and will stream on ESPN+ in the United States and air on Sky Sports in the United Kingdom. It will be the first time a women’s fight headlines at The O2, which has hosted numerous boxing events.

Shields (12-0, 2 KOs), 27, of Flint, Michigan, who is also The Ring magazine champion, and Marshall (12-0, 10 KOs), 31, of England, were on hand to continue their long-running feud face to face.

“I don’t hate nobody, but I do have a huge dislike for her,” Shields said. “My grandma told me not to use the word hate, so I don’t use it, but I don’t like her and she’s one of my biggest haters.

“They’re making it out that she’s a big knockout puncher and she’s the only blemish on my record as an amateur and she has the recipe to beat me. My job is to show everybody in the world that she doesn’t and that I reign supreme in three different weight classes for a reason. If she was the one who was really supreme, she would be champion in three different weight classes and not me. She’s a slow fighter and that is going to hurt her. Also, she’s tall but doesn’t know how to fight tall. All that inside stuff isn’t going to work against me.”

Shields is a former unified super middleweight champion and the only woman to be a two-division undisputed champion, doing so at junior middleweight and middleweight. But when he moved down to junior middleweight, she vacated the WBO middleweight title.

That opened the door for Marshall to win the vacant belt in October 2020. Shields will have a chance to become the two-time undisputed 160-pound champion against the only woman to ever defeat her. Shields was 77-1 as an amateur and won two Olympic gold medals but her lone loss was a 14-8 decision to Marshall in 2012.

“Savannah Marshall got lucky in 2012, but she won’t get lucky in 2022,” Shields said. “I was 17 and also London was hosting the Olympics and they favored her. The Olympics and the amateurs matter to you. As an amateur, you went 60-16 with zero knockouts. I was 77-1, 19 KOs. You had zero (knockouts). You can’t do anything I can do. You can sit here and talk, but you’re not going to win on Sept. 10.”

Marshall, who will be making her fourth title defense, is excited to finally have the fight and confident her power will be the difference.

“This fight has been a long time coming, but we are here now and on Sept. 10, I will be the new undisputed middleweight champion of the world,” Marshall said. “I’m a fan of Claressa Shields. What she’s done for the sport is amazing. She’s a pioneer for the sport, but the reality is, she doesn’t beat me. The first time we fought she didn’t perform and she won’t again on Sept. 10. That’s what it is and it kills her. It burns her inside.

“I’ve knocked out people you went 10 rounds with. I’m not just going to beat you. I’m going to hurt you and outbox you. That’s all you need to know. I’m a better fighter. I’ll have all her world titles on Sept. 10. I win this fight through heart and my boxing brain. On Sept. 10, I will become the (undisputed) champion of the world and that will be the end of her rubbish.”

Mayer (17-0, 5 KOs), 31, Shields’s 2016 U.S. Olympic teammate from Los Angeles, unified 130-pound belts and claimed the vacant Ring title in November via decision over Maiva Hamadouche in the consensus 2021 women’s fight of the year and then retained the belts in a rout of Jessica Han on April 9.

Mayer had been hoping to further unify the division as had Baumgardner (12-1, 7 KOs), 28, of Bingham Farms, Michigan. They had designs on facing WBA titlist Hyu Mi Choi but neither could finalize the fight and they began trash talking each other on social media while their teams worked to make the match.

Mayer and Baumgardner did not attend the news conference but gave their thoughts on the fight.

“I’m here to make the biggest fights possible, so I salute my team for making her an offer she couldn’t refuse,” Mayer said. “I am ecstatic to finally be making my U.K. debut and to share the stage once again with my Olympic sis, Claressa Shields. I love this era of women's boxing because we are re-writing the narrative and working to give our supporters the fights they deserve.

“To date, I’ve accomplished all I said I was going to do, and this next fight will be no different. I have all the tools and experience I need. There are levels to this sport, and she’s nowhere near mine. You can bet on it.”

Baumgardner stopped Terri Harper in the fourth round of to win the WBC belt a week after Mayer-Hamadouche and made her first defense by shutout decision over Edith Soledad Matthysse on April 16. Mayer is widely viewed as a step up in competition but that did not stop Baumgardner from predicting a violent KO win.

“When we are both gray and old, Mayer is still going to be having Alycia Baumgardner flashbacks,” Baumgardner said. “When she is lying horizontally in the ring, Mayer will think back to the first time my name left her mouth and she’s going to wish it hadn’t. Not only will Mayer feel my power, but her descendants are also going to feel what I do to her. Not only will I take Mayer’s belts, but I’ll take everything from her.

“She’ll be lucky if I let her keep her name. If I’m not haunting her dreams before the fight, I will be after it. If you come at the queen, you best not miss. On the bright side for Mayer, a loss to me will be the best result on her resume.”

Jake Paul issues deadline

Jake Paul isn’t going to wait around for Tommy Fury to get his visa issues in order before selecting a new opponent.

“Tommy is officially out by Wednesday morning if he doesn’t go to the embassy / come out of hiding,” Paul posted on his social media. “3 other opponents lined up. I’m built different.”

Paul and Fury, the half-brother of heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, are scheduled to fight in an eight-round cruiserweight bout in the main event of a Showtime PPV card on Aug. 6 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The fight was announced and Tommy Fury (8-0, 4 KOs), 23, was due to meet Paul (5-0, 4 KOs), 25, of Cleveland, at a new conference at Madison Square Garden last Wednesday.

However, the day before the press conference, Fury was not permitted to board his flight from London to New York.

The Paul camp said it was surprised because Fury had been in the U.S. a month ago and Fury said in an Instagram video he did not know why he was barred from traveling to the U.S.

Paul said he was told Fury simply needed to go to the embassy in London and get his visa in person.

Showtime said it is monitoring the situation and that an opponent change may be necessary.

Fury was supposed to face Paul in December in Tampa but withdrew claiming a rib injury and chest infection. Paul instead faced former UFC star Tyron Woodley in a short-notice rematch and brutally knocked him out in the sixth round.

Quick hits

Lightweight up-and-comer Frank Martin (15-0, 11 KOs), 27, of Indianapolis, has a new opponent for his Showtime-televised opener on Saturday (9 p.m. ET) at the Alamodome in San Antonio. Martin will face Jackson Marinez in the 10-rounder on the Mark Magsayo-Rey Vargas undercard because original opponent Ricardo Nunez (23-3, 21 KOs), 28, of Panama, a former world title challenger, is out due to visa issues, sources told Fight Freaks Unite. Marinez (19-2, 7 KOs), 31 of the Dominican Republic, has not fought since a sixth-round knockout loss to former lightweight titlist Richard Commey in February 2021, but in Marinez’s previous bout he lost a highly controversial decision to Rolando Romero in an interim title bout in August 2020.

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Heavyweight Jarrell Miller (24-0-1, 20 KOs), 33, of Brooklyn, New York, is slated for his second fight in a month, a 10-rounder against Derek Cardenas (8-9, 7 KOs), 24, of Mexico, on July 23 at Embassy Suites in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The plan is for Miller to fight around once a month to shake off the rust of a long layoff and get back into shape. Idle since November 2018 because of several positive tests for performance enhancing drugs that caused multiple bouts to be canceled (including a shot at then-unified heavyweight titlist Anthony Joshua in December 2019) and a suspension by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, returned for a unanimous decision over Argentina’s Ariel Esteban Bracamonte (11-8, 6 KOs) on June 23 on the WBA KO Drugs Festival card in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Show and tell

It seems like forever that Nonito Donaire, an absolute lock first-ballot Hall of Famer, has been in the consciousness of boxing fans. He has won world titles in four divisions — flyweight, bantamweight, junior featherweight and featherweight — and claimed an interim belt at junior bantamweight. He has held unified titles at bantamweight and junior featherweight. Seven years after leaving the bantamweight division he returned and won another title at age 35 (just two weeks shy of his 36th birthday), becoming the oldest fighter in division history to win a 118-pound belt. Then, after a loss, he went on to win another bantamweight title at age 38 to break his own record. He has been in a fight of the year (a 2019 decision loss to Naoya Inoue), twice scored the knockout of the year (2007 vs. Vic Darchinyan and 2011 vs. Fernando Montiel), won the upset of the year (vs. Darchinyan) and was the 2012 consensus fighter of the year. He also has one of the all-time great left hooks, has been a strong advocate of serious drug testing for many years and has long been viewed as a truly nice guy outside of the ring.

That tremendous legacy began when he was 17-1, largely unknown and matched with the powerful and heavily favored IBF flyweight titleholder Darchinyan in the co-feature of a Showtime-televised card headlined by Joachim Alcine’s unanimous decision over Travis Simms to take his WBA junior middleweight title in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a hometown fight for Simms. Darchinyan had made six successful defenses and won five by knockout. The one that didn’t end by KO was a sixth-round technical decision against Glenn Donaire, Nonito’s older brother. Nonito had been fighting at junior bantamweight and moved down to flyweight for the title shot. It was a competitive fight until Donaire landed his calling card left hook and knocked Darchinyan out in devastating fashion in the fifth round. The fight was on July 7, 2007 — 15 years ago on Thursday. Here is a scarce program from the fight in my collection. Darchinyan-Donaire isn’t the cover but there is a nice four-page spread on them inside.

Paul photo: Amanda Westcott/Showtime

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