First to enter is Hammer. The popular Dortmund boxer is making her way to the ring to Fat Joe and Remy Ma song’s All the Way Up. It’s a hostile crowd with most here pulling for the two-time Olympic gold medalist but Hammer is having fun with the moment, mugging for the audience amid the chorus of boos. Next it’s Shields wearing a a white robe with green trim, accompanied by an emcee and three of her middleweight title belts. Looking all business.
Christy Martin is here at Boardwalk Hall and she’s just been called into the ring by announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr ahead of the fighters’ entrances. The former two-division world champion helped put women’s boxing on the map during the 1990s, appearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated and lifting the sport to new levels of visibility.
Now chants of “T Rex! T Rex!” – Shields’ cretaceous nickname – echo throughout the room as the crowd awaits the main event.
Jermaine Franklin has just defeated Rydell Booker by a unanimous decision in the final undercard bout. It was a far closer fight than the official scores of 99-91, 98-92 and 98-92 would suggest, but Franklin (18-0, 13 KOs), a 25-year-old from Saginaw, did well to overcome some tricky moments and deliver a strong finishing kick in the 10-rounder.
Shields and Hammer are next.
The surprise of the night (so far) came early on the undercard. Samuel Peter, who held the WBC heavyweight title in 2008, lost a disputed split decision to Mexico’s Mario Heredia in the second fight of his comeback from a three-year layoff. The Nigerian Nightmare, now 38, scored a knockdown in the third round but was unable to close the show and left the ring in dismay after judges Eugene Grant (77-74) and James Kinney (76-75) scored it for Heredia while Alan Rubenstein had it 79-72 for Peter (as did the Guardian).
It was a step up in competition from Peter’s last fight – a first-round knockout of Gerardo Escobar (2-22, 1 KO) at Cheers Bar & Grill in Tijuana (where everybody knows your name) – but it’s surely a career high point for the journeyman Heredia (16-1-1, 13 KOs), who was 2-5-1 in his last eight and has been stopped five times in his career.
Thing is, it may not even be Peter’s biggest disappointment in this building. Way back in 2005, Peter dropped Wladimir Klitschko three times in a heavyweight title eliminator at Boardwalk Hall only to lose a unanimous decision by 114-111 on all three cards.
Hello and welcome to Atlantic City for tonight’s middleweight title unification fight between Claressa Shields and Christina Hammer. We’re ringside at the Adrian Phillips Theater at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall for what’s been called the most significant women’s boxing fight in a generation as Shields, the two-time Olympic gold medalist who’s captured three of the major world titles at 160lbs in the last year, and Christina Hammer, the German émigrée from Kazakhstan who has owned the fourth for nearly a decade, will meet to determine only the second champion in the history of women’s boxing to unify all four major championship belts.
The first of tonight’s two televised preliminary bouts has just finished … and practically before it started. Otto Wallin, the undefeated Swedish heavyweight comer from Sweden, was forced to settle for a no-contest after opponent Nick Kisner suffered a cut from an accidental clash of heads in the first round of their scheduled 10-rounder.
Shields and Hammer will make their ringwalks in a little under an hour with just one undercard fight to go: another heavyweight scrap between Jermaine Franklin and Rydell Booker scheduled for 10 rounds.