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The best women’s boxer of all time will make her mixed martial arts debut on Thursday night, as Claressa Shields takes on Brittney Elkin on Thursday night live from Atlantic City as part of the Professional Fight League’s PFL 4 event.
The two-time Olympic gold medalist Shields has cleaned out two divisions in women’s boxing as a professional. She enters the cage with an 11-0 record as a boxer, and is the only boxer in history of any gender, to hold all four major world titles in boxing — WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO simultaneously in two weight classes. She remains the light middleweight champion, and held the undisputed middleweight title from 2019 to 2020 as well.
Thursday’s card will be from the Ocean Casino Resort near the boardwalk in Atlantic City. There will be a total of nine fights on the card, but the main event will be the debut of Shields in a cage instead of a ring. Shields is all-in on her movement as a combat sports athlete from boxing to MMA, and has been training in Albuquerque with stars such as former UFC champion Holly Holm.
Elkin might not provide as much resistance as some others, holding a 3-6 record in MMA with just one career stoppage. She’s lost her last three bouts by TKO or submission, and hasn’t been in the cage since January of 2019.
The entire card will kick off at 7:00 p.m. on ESPN+, with the main card airing live on ESPN2 as well as ESPN+ beginning at 10:00 p.m. If you can’t watch the fight on TV, you have the option to stream the fight on WatchESPN. If you don’t have cable, you can get a free trial from YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, AT&T TV Now, FuboTV, or Sling TV to stream Shields vs. Elkin.