Claressa Shields: ‘You gotta be great to survive all I did – Savannah Marshall is gonna be shocked’

Three-belt world champion fought back from a tortured childhood and hopes to avenge her only defeat on Saturday

I'm never going to allow any of the kids in my family to go through what I went through," Claressa Shields says quietly as she turns her intense gaze on me. The 27-year-old American, who fights Savannah Marshall in a riveting bout which headlines the historic all-women boxing card at the O₂ Arena on Saturday night, has already told me about her harrowing past. She grew up in abject poverty in Flint, Michigan, in an area which remains one of the most deprived in America, and she was raped systematically from the age of five.

Shields pauses and then, with blazing eyes, continues to remember everything she endured. I know what it was like. I know how it can make you very, very angry. I don't want those kids to have the anger I had because I was very, very mad growing up. If I hadn't have found boxing, who knows where I'd be at, with the anger I had inside of me."