“I give myself an A-minus,” Shields said. “The only thing I didn’t do was get the damn knockout.”
On paper, Kozin figured to pose a challenge. Like Shields, she is 5 feet 8 inches and weighed in just below the middleweight limit of 160 pounds. She is also a southpaw who has recorded 11 knockouts in 21 wins.
But in the ring, Shields outclassed her.
When Kozin spent the first round advancing, Shields patiently retreated and counterpunched. Midway through the first, Shields landed two hard right hands to the body. Just before the bell, she connected with a straight right and left hook to the head.
In the fourth, a pair of straight rights to the face made Kozin grimace. The next round, a flurry of punches from Shields prompted Kozin to wrap the champion in a clinch. At the bell, Kozin made a slow, slump-shouldered walk back to her corner.
Each successive round convinced Shields’s team that Kozin would not last the 10-round distance.
“Don’t rush it,” said John David Jackson, Shields’s trainer. “You can get her out.”
Marshall watched from ringside, looking bored. When she saw herself on the broadcast’s camera she pretended to fall asleep, suggesting she was unimpressed by Shields’s failure to knock Kozin out. By then, the fight’s broadcast crew was already speculating on a venue for a Shields-Marshall title fight, suggesting a soccer stadium or the O2 Arena in London.
Barring the plot twists that often derail significant fights that seem certain, Shields and Marshall should fight later this year. But is their hypothetical bout the biggest women’s fight ever?
Like all boxing titles, that claim is disputed.
Laila Ali and Christy Martin were the biggest names in women’s boxing when they fought in 2003. But the 35-year-old Martin had to jump three weight classes to meet the 25-year-old Ali, who won by knockout in four lopsided rounds.