Hartlepool's Savannah Marshall has told Claressa Shields to stop bringing race into their feud ahead of their boxing meeting this Saturday night.
Marshall inflicted Shields' only defeat of her entire professional and amateur career back in 2012 and the pair's careers have run parallel. This will be their first professional meeting, with their middleweight unification bout putting Shields' WBA, WBC, IBF, WBF, and The Ring female middleweight titles on the line against Marshall's WBO crown.
Double Olympic champion Shields brings her titles to the UK to take on Marshall who has an unbeaten record so far in her career with a record of 12-0 and ten of those wins coming via knockout. However, she has only become world champion in the middleweight division while Shields has become undisputed champion across two weight divisions.
READ MORE: Shields vs Marshall date, time, undercard and how to watch
The two have gone back and forth in some fiery press conferences, but Marshall has told Shields to not bring race into their feud.
Marshall said: "The only thing is, and it’s not really gotten under my skin, but she’s mentioned race a couple of times.
"For me, race shouldn’t be mentioned in sport and I thought, 'Claressa rail it in, you’re about to cross the line there’. That’s probably the only thing, but like I said she needs to be careful. It never affected me personally but when she’s saying it I’m thinking ‘hang on Claressa’. That shouldn’t be involved in sport, what’s she’s playing at? It’s no wonder people don’t like her with comments like that."
It's unclear which exact comments the Hartlepool fighter was referring to, but in an interview with Seconds Out, Shields said: "She’s a hater, she wishes she was me. She wishes she had the belts and the gold medals, but she doesn't. Marshall just wants to be me, she wishes she was black and everything. It’s just sad."
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