Chantelle Cameron Targets Claressa Shields After Winning Three Belts
Chantelle Cameron walked out of Birmingham with three new belts and one clear target.
Fresh from a brutal, breathless points win over Mikaela Mayer at MPW-06, the new WBA, WBC and WBO super-welterweight champion says negotiations to face Claressa Shields are not just alive – they’re accelerating.
From Mayer war to GWOAT hunt
Cameron’s unanimous decision over Mayer was the kind of fight that hardens a legacy. Scores of 97-93, 97-93 and 96-94 told one story; the eye test told another. This was a tight, high-class contest, edged by a fighter who has made a habit of walking into the toughest rooms and leaving with the lights still on.
She already owns the distinction no one else in the professional ranks can claim: the only woman to have beaten Katie Taylor. Now she has climbed to super-welterweight, taken three world titles in one night, and immediately pointed her crosshairs at the self-proclaimed “GWOAT”.
“I fancy (fighting) Clarissa Shields,” Cameron told Sky Sports, spelling out her ambition with no hint of caution. “I think I really do want to dare to be great and Clarissa Shields, she's the GWOAT, she's number one and that's going to be a fight that will just be unbelievable.”
The win over Mayer seemed, to many, to be the first chapter in a rivalry that would demand an instant sequel. Instead, Cameron has swerved the safe option and gone straight for the sport’s most decorated technician.
Talks “very advanced”
This isn’t idle call-out talk. Behind the scenes, Cameron insists the wheels are already spinning at speed.
“The teams are actually in talks for that now so there is actually movement on that fight and for me that makes me giddy,” she said. “I think that really is me challenging the very, very best and what an opportunity if this fight comes off.
“They (talks) are very advanced; it is moving pretty quick is what my managers told me, and it is a very high possibility the fight will happen.”
Shields, the reigning WBC and WBA middleweight champion with a 19-0 record across multiple divisions, has long presented herself as the pinnacle of the women’s game. Cameron, freshly crowned at 154lbs and already proven at 140, is now pushing hard for the chance to test that claim in the ring rather than in soundbites.
The Price question
There is, however, another name in Shields’ orbit.
When the American star stopped Kaye Scott in the sixth round in August to reclaim her middleweight belts, she made it clear Lauren Price topped her wish list. She spoke of December or January as the ideal window. Price welcomed the idea. So did the market in the UK, where women’s boxing has surged into the mainstream.
Yet Shields’ promoter, Dmitriy Salita, has his own vision of how that story should unfold.
“Claressa came down to middleweight to make the biggest fights possible,” Salita told Sky Sports. “We want to make this a mega-event, and I believe that fight belongs in the United States.
“That being said, we love the UK, and another fight there is certainly not out of the question. It's an incredible time for women's boxing.”
So the picture is clear but crowded. Shields has publicly flirted with Price. Cameron’s camp says talks for their own superfight are “very advanced”. Promoters see “mega-event” potential on both sides of the Atlantic.
What comes next will not just shape one champion’s path. It will help decide where the true summit of women’s boxing now lies – and which fighter gets to plant her flag there first.
