Do we like them?

Do we like Claressa Shields?

Our score: 5 out of 10. Real community good and a big career, set against a hot temper and a mixed record on trans athletes in sport.

Shields is a Flint, Michigan native, and the city has claimed her as its own. In December 2025 she went into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, with fans and the press calling her the GWOAT, the greatest woman of all time. Her story is a hometown-hero one, and she keeps coming back to Flint. I couldn't open a full profile of her childhood, so that part of the backstory is thin here.

The loudest recent drama was in May. MVP banned her from all its events 'until further notice' after a scuffle with fellow champion Alycia Baumgardner in a VIP area at MVP MMA 1 in California. Video showed Shields slapping Baumgardner's hand away before security separated them. Baumgardner said she was “physically assaulted without provocation”, which is her allegation, and Shields framed Baumgardner as the verbal aggressor. No court has decided anything.

The harm check is a close call. In 2022 Shields reacted to the WBC's trans program by asking whether someone who identified as a woman could fight her. WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman replied that the WBC bans bouts between a born man and a born woman, and she thanked him for clearing it up. In 2024 she called Imane Khelif and another Olympic boxer transgender, then apologised: “I wish I would've did my research before.” That's a mistake that wrongly labelled a cis woman, not a campaign, and I found no wider pattern of anti-LGBTQ+ activism, anti-vax talk or climate denial.

There's also the Flint side. At her annual Christmas giveaway she asked a woman to leave, saying the woman had been trolling her online and threatening to spit on her. Shields told her “Don't even make a big scene, just go”, and later said she might have handled it differently had she known more. It's a messy moment, but it sits next to giveaways she runs for her community year after year.

In 2025 the Michigan Unarmed Combat Commission suspended her after an oral fluid sample from her win over Danielle Perkins tested positive for marijuana. Shields said she had never smoked weed and called the amount very small, and her promoter said he expected her to be cleared. I couldn't open a page confirming how it ended, so treat it as contested.

The boxing is the easy bit. She beat Franchon Crews-Dezurn in February to defend her heavyweight crown, then dropped down to middleweight and stopped Kaye Scott in front of a sold-out Atlanta crowd to go 19-0. Afterwards she said she couldn't believe she'd scored a knockout in front of Usher. Next up is Lauren Price, with the fight expected in early 2027.