‘I have more knockouts than she has wins’: Laila Ali shuts down idea of fighting Claressa Shields

 “She will not be rewarded with the opportunity to share the ring with me,” Laila Ali says of Claressa Shields in a new response video.

It looks like the only place we’ll be seeing Laila Ali and Claressa Shields fighting is on social media.

On Thursday, Ali released a new YouTube video in which she continued to set the record straight in the ongoing feud between her and Shields. 

“She will not be rewarded with the opportunity to share the ring with me or anything else,” Ali said. “Now, after all this [that] she’s put me through, I would never partner or collaborate with her on anything.” 

Now, the two notable female boxers have been going toe to toe on social media for weeks. However, Ali’s latest response comes after Shields released a YouTube video in which she claimed to have been “exposing the lies” and what she believed to be the root of their beef, which she believes started years ago. 

“Laila Ali has been losing the fight against me for a very long time, and we all know when you start losing the fight, you go below the belt. I really did not want to have to respond to this video because I am not into tearing another black woman down,” Shields said in her video. “This is just another example of the older [generation] hating on the youth.” 

Between the shady comments throughout the years, there have been beckonings from Shields and fans to see the two go toe-to-toe in the ring. Ali previously shared that she would only consider fighting if she was offered $15-20 million for the fight. And though many fans thought the two’s back and forth would be a buildup to a legendary fight, bringing Ali out of retirement, the daughter of the iconic Muhammad Ali shut down all hopes of that happening. 

“Did her plan work? Did she make me mad enough to come out of retirement after 18 years and start training again to make her dream of fighting me and having a big payday courtesy of Laila Ali come true? Absolutely not,” she said. “After years of blatant lies and vile disrespect, making unsolicited negative remarks about me, questioning the legitimacy of my boxing legacy, and having the audacity to cross the line by disrespecting my deceased father, trying to use his name to discredit his daughter.”

“The bottom line is she crossed a line that can never be uncrossed. She showed me and the world who she really is. And like Maya Angelou said, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,’” she continued.