In boxing Savannah Marshall was an undisputed super-middleweight champion but last year she decided to compete in a second sport and began training in MMA; Marshall will now make her MMA debut in a June 8 PFL event in Newcastle, a new career that she intends to balance alongside boxing
Tuesday 2 April 2024 09:45, UK
Savannah Marshall’s next fight won’t be in boxing. Instead she will compete in MMA for the first time.
Marshall is a two-weight world titlist in boxing and an undisputed super-middleweight champion.
But she has elected to compete in mixed martial arts as well and began training in the new sport last year.
She will have her first MMA bout on June 8 at the Utilita Arena in Newcastle, near her Hartlepool hometown.
"It's exciting, it's new, it's something that I'm really interested in," Marshall told Sky Sports previously.
"Sometimes in training, I feel good and I think yeah I'm getting it now and other times I'm getting tapped like that and I think: 'I am terrible at this.' It's exciting for me because it's new," she explained.
"It's BJJ, you've got kickboxing, you've got judo, wrestling so it's a mix of all these different sports that I've never ever tried."
Marshall intends to combine both sports and is expected to make a return to boxing later this year.
BOXXER's Ben Shalom, who promoted Marshall's ground-breaking clash with Claressa Shields, believes that Marshall will continue to make an impact in boxing and wants to see her compete over 12 three-minute rounds, as they do in men's boxing, rather than the 10 twos that most women's title fights are contested over.
Shalom wants to see a rematch with Marshall's great rival.
"I think that Claressa Shields fight, we still talk, me and Dmitry [Salita, Shields' boxing promoter]. We're desperate to make it. I think it's the fight that Savannah and Claressa both want," Shalom told Sky Sports.
"I think it has to happen at 168lbs over three-minute rounds. I think the first fight, although it was a great fight, you have to say Claressa did win it and I think Savannah feels like the longer the rounds go on the more likely she is to knock her out and catch her.
"I think that's a fight we definitely will see, hopefully at the back end of the year, maybe early next year but hopefully at the back end of the year after her MMA fight."
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