Katie Taylor cannot envision a scenario in which it’ll make sense for her to move up in weight to challenge Claressa Shields.
The undefeated, undisputed women’s lightweight champion made it perfectly clear during a recent appearance on “The Ak & Barak Show” that she has no intention of fighting Shields. The insurmountable problem is that they’re too far apart in weight for Taylor’s taste.
Taylor holds four world titles three weight classes below the division in which Shields is a unified champion. Shields (11-0, 2 KOs) called out Taylor following her dominant, 10-round points victory over Marie-Eve Dicaire in their 154-pound title unification match March 5 in Flint, Michigan, Shields’ hometown.
Ireland’s Taylor is well aware of Shields’ desire to fight her, but it isn’t realistic, according to the 2012 Olympic gold medalist.
“It’s a pity that Claressa hasn’t got the dance partners, really, at that weight, well, besides maybe Savannah Marshall at the moment,” Taylor told co-hosts Barak Bess and Akin Reyes, whose show streams daily on DAZN and SiriusXM. “But I walk around at maybe 139 pounds. I’m not the biggest lightweight in the world, so I don’t think that fight would ever happen. It’s too much of a weight discrepancy. And it’s a pity, really, because obviously it is a dream fight for a lot of people. But there’s just too much of a weight difference.”
The 34-year-old Taylor (17-0, 6 KOs) is preparing to defend her IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO 135-pound crowns against England’s Natasha Jonas (9-1-1, 7 KOs) on May 1 at an undetermined site. Taylor expressed interest during the aforementioned interview in revisiting negotiations for a long-discussed showdown with Amanda Serrano after facing Jonas.
Brooklyn’s Serrano (40-1-1, 35 KOs) was supposed to battle Taylor last year, but the seven-division champion withdrew from their fight after multiple postponements.
The 26-year-old Shields has won world titles in the junior middleweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions since she made her pro debut in November 2016. The two-time Olympic gold medalist already has dropped down 14 pounds – from 168 to 154 – and says she’d be willing to go all the way down to 147 pounds to fight Taylor, who has competed once at the junior welterweight limit of 140.
“Katie Taylor is not the worry in that sentence, the 147 is,” Shields stated during her post-fight interview after defeating Dicaire (17-1, 0 KOs). “Katie is a great fighter. They gotta pay me a lotta money for me to lose my butt to go down to 147. Like, at the end of the day, I’m a woman and that’s something that I love about my body. I might not have no big breasts, but I’ve got a nice butt. And I will lose that going to 147, so they need to come with that dough, and I’ll be seeing Katie at 147, as long as they come at least with a million. Talk to me nice.”
Beyond mentioning Taylor as a potential opponent, Shields called out Marshall following her victory over Dicaire. England’s Marshall (9-0, 7 KOs), the WBO middleweight champion, is the only opponent to defeat Shields as an amateur or a professional.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.