Savannah Marshall’s ambitions to become the undisputed women’s middleweight champion in a blockbuster collision with long-time American rival Claressa Shields were made real on Saturday night when the Hartlepool boxer retained her World Boxing Organisation middleweight crown against her Belgian opponent Femke Hermans in Newcastle. Marshall brutally knocked Hermans out with a left hook in the third round to make a huge statement.

Headlining an event for the first time, Marshall moved her undefeated record on to 12-0 with her tenth knockout, laying down a marker with this stoppage, and will be favourite against Shields. The victory heralds one of the most-anticipated contests in women’s boxing, with the Marshall-Shields rivalry spanning back ten years into the amateur ranks and the Olympics. Marshall, then 20, was world amateur champion; Shields, then 17, was Olympic champion in London in 2012.

Marshall remains the only fighter to have beaten Shields in the ring, at those AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships, becoming the world No 1. But then, just a few months later, it was then teenager Shields who took the first women’s Olympic middleweight gold in London, while Marshall lost on points to Marina Volnova of Kazakhstan in her opening quarter-final bout.

“It will have been nearly 10 years since we last boxed. So this has been kind of going on for 10 years,” said Marshall. ‘We’ve had little spats on Twitter and have come face to face before but nothing really like that. It’s always been there between me and Claressa. It’s nothing really new.” 

Both remain undefeated as professional fighters, and Hermans was outpointed over ten rounds by Shields in December
2018. 

Marshall was intent on not missing that opportunity, and was at her most focused on Saturday, alternating her now familiar style of long shots with both hands, on her feet and elusive, before attacking with a heavy-handed hooks when the 6-feet tall boxer planted her feet in range, dominating switch-hitter Hermans.

Marshall, known as ‘The Silent Assassin’, wasted little time here in establishing the fight’s rhythm, against the Belgian who was a former WBO super-middleweight champion.  “I wanted to make a statement but I’ll always go about it the right way,” explained Marshall, who is trained by Peter Fury, the leading trainer in his nephew Tyson Fury’s corner when he won the world heavyweight title against Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.