Habazin Warns Shields: Never In My Life Did I Prepare Like This

Ivana Habazin has done her best to treat it as a blessing disguise in waiting out her eventual showdown with two-division champion Claressa Shields.

The two were due to collide for a vacant 154-pound title on Aug. 17, only for the bout to be postponed by seven weeks after Shields (9-0, 2KOs) suffered a knee injury in mid-June. The bout will now take place on Oct. 5, live on Showtime from Dort Federal Event Center in Shields’ hometown of Flint, Mich.

It provided the visiting Croatian boxer with an extra seven weeks of preparation, though also testing her patience in the process.

“My first reaction was, ‘Damn I will not see my belts for two more months.’ But that’s boxing, anything is possible,” Habazin (20-3, 7KOs) admitted during a recent media conference call to discuss the upcoming event. “You can never expect something like that, but you never know. Anything is possible, anyone can get injured.

“But we got the (rescheduled date), so I stayed in training camp to prepare. Maybe with this, it will actually help me because I feel much better right now.”

Habazin initially used the moment to talk trash to her forthcoming ring rival, insisting the real issue was the unbeaten American’s struggle to get down to the super welterweight limit. Shields—a two-time Olympic Gold medalist and reigning undisputed middleweight champion—will come down in weight, in hopes of becoming a three-division titlist by her 10th pro bout, which would surpass the mark previously set by Vasily Lomachenko and Kosei Tanaka, both accomplishing the feat just one year ago.

Shields weighed 167 pounds for her pro debut, bouncing back and forth between middleweight and super middleweight while winning titles in both weight divisions in the process. The 24-year old—currently the youngest American to hold a major title—has never weighed less than 159¼ pounds any career bout, which she has weighed for each of her past two fights.

The Oct. 5 super welterweight title fight carries a hard limit of 154 pounds, where Habazin has fought at or below for her entire nine-year pro career. Aside from fighting in the United States for the first time—and in Shields’ hometown, at that—the former welterweight titlist has taken advantage of the additional training time, reaching a point in camp where the focus has shifted from properly making weight to enhancing her strength.

“Never in my life did I prepare like this,” insists Habazin, who has won five straight since a knockout loss to Mikaela Lauren in a failed April 2016 super welterweight title bid. “I feel strong, I really feel strong and I do feel I have the power to knock people out.”

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox