The pair have been rivals for ten years now, after Marshall got the better of the American in an amateur bout back in 2012, a feat that has not been matched since as she remains the only fighter to have ever beaten Shields.
Since then though it’s Shields who has had the more decorated career, undisputed in two different weight classes and she defends her WBA, IBF and WBC belts in London tonight.
Marshall became a world champion in her ninth professional bout, her power evident on her swift march through the division but this is now the ultimate test on the biggest of stages.
Earlier in the night on an all-female card featuring 11 fights and 22 women, Mikaela Mayer faces Alycia Baumgardner in what should be a thrilling fight, while Caroline Dubois and Lauren Price are among those also in action.
The two women, whose bitter rivalry stretches back 10 years, will face off for the undisputed middleweight championship on Saturday in London on a historic night for women’s boxing, marking the first-ever all female card in the UK, as well the first time two women will headline at the O2 Arena.
It is the latest landmark during a historic year for the sport in which Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano became the first women to ever headline at Madison Square Gardens in May.
Women’s boxing was banned in the UK as recently as 1998, and the rivalry between Marshall and Shields covers almost half the time in which the sport has been legal.
It began back at the 2012 AIBA world championship when Marshall emerged victorious on points, 14-8, inflicting the only defeat on Shields that she has ever suffered in her professional or amateur career.
Marshall won that world championship a few days later while a then 17-year-old Shields won the Olympics a few months later.
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I am not [using that fight as motivation],” Shields added. “I’m not a person that cares about something that happened 10 years ago.
“It does not matter to me, but what I do know is that I have gotten better over the years, and I have challenged myself to be better after every fight … So I was never able to live off a victory or actually embrace a win or anything. You just win and move on.”
Marshall, meanwhile, was knocked out of the preliminary rounds at the London and Rio Olympic Games, suffered from social anxiety and considered retiring from boxing before turning professional in 2017 and building her own imposing reputation.
