Claressa Shields first U.S. woman to win gold medal at Pan Am Games
Olympic champion Claressa Shields added another title and more history to her resume Friday night: Pan American Games champion.
Shields, from Flint, Mich., is the first American female boxer to win a gold medal at the Pan American Games.
The gold-medal winner at the 2012 London Games continued to beat everyone in her path, this time shutting out Yenebier Guillen of the Dominican Republic 3-0 to win the middleweight gold medal at the Oshawa Sports Centre in Toronto. Shields has not lost to Guillen in four meetings.
In the third round, the referee took a point from Shields for lowering her head while she avoided Guillen's straight lefts. Shields responded by stepping up her punch count and also switched from southpaw to orthodox stances throughout the fight.
"She came out and fought a little bit different this time," Shields said of Guillen. "I've never had a point taken from me before and I've boxed in a lot of tournaments in a lot of countries with a lot of different referees and I've never had a point taken for moving my head," Shields said. "That still didn't scare me though, I knew it was just one point. I knew I won the first three rounds easy and in the fourth round, she started to move and didn't really try to fight. I just kept pressuring her and won a unanimous decision."
Shields, 20, won all three of her matches at the Pan Am Games and has won gold in every major international event in which she has competed, taking titles in elite and youth world championships as well as her 2012 Olympic gold medal. She recently moved from Flint to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to focus on her run at a second Olympic gold medal at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
"I feel like I definitely had a huge improvement from my first match here. In my first fight, I did a whole lot of fighting off the ropes, I guess I was doing the rope-a-dope," Shields said. "I think my best fight here was my second fight against Argentina. Against Dominican Republic, she's very strong. She knocks girls out but you're not going to catch me with a big shot like that so I had to be really strong with her. I have a lot to work on over the next year. I need to get faster, smarter and stronger of course."
Two more Americans, men's flyweight Antonio Vargas, and women's flyweight Marlen Esparza, will try to make it three gold medals for the U.S. team on Saturday night, the last day of boxing competition at the Games.
Vargas, from Kissimmee, Fla., faces Cuba's Yosbany Vietia and Esparza, from Houston, takes on Canadian Mandy Bujold in the final bout of the Games.
The Cuban men's team won three of their five final matches on Friday.
PHOTO GALLERY: Best Shots from the Pan Am Games