How do you break through the glass ceiling? Do you chip away at it a little bit every day? That can work, but if you’re Olympic gold medallist Claressa Shields, you ball up your fist and punch through it. But it took Claressa many years of hard work and heartbreak to swing that punch.
Now, in 2016, in the aftermath of Trump triumphant we really need a champion who can punch through for all the women and abandoned communities in the USA. Who else then to stand as a true people’s champion than a young African-American woman from Flint, Michigan. A champion in a 10 round rumble with a patriarchy who are going out for the count.
Claressa’s story was a fairy tale, which meant like Cinderella. She started in poverty and misery and overcame it, though Claressa had no Fairy Godmother. Coming from a broken home, her father was in and out of prison; her mother struggling and failing to maintain a safe household. A young Claressa often went days without food and was assaulted and sexually abused by strange men brought into her home. Then she found boxing, “I was running and running from failure and the further I ran, the further away I got. I ran a lot.”
She went to the Olympics won every one of her matches and the gold. She was a prodigious talent who punched her way to the top. Play the song Eye of the Tiger and roll credits, she’s the hero right? But life isn’t a movie and life carries on after that bell rings. Claressa came home and her story continued.
The media didn’t like how she talked tough. She had an attitude like the great one Ali. They couldn’t forgive her for not ever being beaten. She wasn’t pretty or feminine enough; they didn’t like her hair! Even an Olympic gold medallist boxer at age 17 can’t just punch through the patriarchy.
Not least of all is when she had to return to her hometown of Flint. She said, “The water isn’t even the worst thing, it’s the gun violence. I know at least 15 kids who’ve been shot and killed.”
Claressa realised she would have to do what no US boxer had done before and catch lightning in the bottle twice; she was going to have to return to the Olympics.
Claressa struggled through her training and still, at age 21, she punched through another barrier by winning her second gold medal in the Rio Olympics. She wanted to prove she was no fluke; she certainly knocked that one out.
Today, only a few months later, she is hammering at yet another glass ceiling. Claressa is now a professional fighter, but she is, as yet, unsigned by a promoter. If there is one person who can definitely shake up the world of boxing, it’s Claressa. She hasn’t been down for the count yet and she looks like she won’t be hitting the canvas anytime soon.