LOS ANGELES, Dec. 24 (UPI) — Boxer-turned-MMA champion Claressa Shields said the new movie about her life, The Fire Inside, in theaters Wednesday, puts more pressure on her to win her February bout.

The film stars Ryan Destiny as Shields, who became the first American female Olympic gold medalist in boxing in 2012. Shields transitioned into MMA in 2020, but will box against Danielle Perkins on Feb. 2.

On the line in this homecoming bout will be Shields’ WBC heavyweight title and WBO heavyweight title, and she’ll also compete for the vacant WBA title. She has a 15-0 professional boxing record, including three knockouts.

“Who wants to have a biopic about their great life and their great story come out and then lose a fight with all these new fans?” Shields, 29, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

“To have a biopic come out about your life while you’re the No. 1 woman fighter in the world, it adds a little pressure to your plate,” she said

The film begins in 2006, when an 11-year-old Claressa (Jazmin Headley, with Kylee D. Allen for running scenes) walks into a Flint, Mich., gym. Coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry) agrees to train her.

By 2011, 16-year-old Claressa (Ryan Destiny) is a contender for USA Boxing’s female Olympic team. Shields confirmed the film’s training montages reflected her real preparations.

“In the ring, running, push-ups, the crunches, punching the bag, hitting the pads, it was a great training montage,” Shields said. “She did very well.”

Destiny sought Shields’ advice over Zoom, particularly in how to cope with soreness after exhausting training and boxing scenes. Shields told her to rest.

“Go and get a massage, ice bath, hot bath, rest, drink some water,” Shields said. “It’s OK to recover. I think a lot of athletes should do more recovery.”

After winning the gold medal in 2012, Shields still struggled financially. She was not winning endorsement deals like male athletes, and USA Boxing paid female fighters less than their male counterparts.

Shields has been an advocate for pay equality in sports, specifically boxing, bringing it up whenever she can in interviews. She said she’s pleased the pay gap is closing, but feels there is more work to do.

“I try to let other girls know what I’ve learned and give them the blueprint to where they can make millions of dollars being professional women fighters,” she said.

The film did take some artistic license with Shields’ post-Olympic struggles. A scene in which she tries to pawn her gold medal never happened, but Shields said it reflected her frustration that winning the gold did not alleviate her financial struggles.

“I locked it in a drawer for a long time,” Shields said. “I considered throwing it in the Flint River because Muhammad Ali threw his gold medal in the Ohio River.”

Shields said watching The Fire Inside made her emotional and brought back memories of struggles that were not included in the film. The film does touch on Shields’ volatile relationship with her mother (Olunike Adeliyi), going hungry as a child, coping with a loss in the ring and more.

“Seeing how hungry we were when I was a kid, it showed it only two times in the scenes, but it was all the time,” Shields said. “I remember everything else that was going on in my life at that time and it makes me very emotional.”

The film ends in the lead-up to the 2016 Olympics. Even in 2024, Shields said she feels like she still has more work to do, like defend her belts in February and win more.

She said her transition to MMA made her feel complete, as well as humbled being thrown to the ground. Shields also learned how to get back up and resist arm bars and other MMA moves.

“I am a complete fighter now,” Shields said. “I was already the best woman fighter in the world in boxing, but now I feel like I can go to the other side and do some damage, too.”

There will be no holiday break for Shields when The Fire Inside opens. She will train for the Perkins fight, and didn’t even let interviews interrupt her regimen.

“I just trained this morning,” Shields said. “I have to. I am eight weeks out from the fight and I have to perform.”

The life and legacy of professional boxer and mixed martial artist Claressa Shields is the driving force behind ‘The Fire Inside,’ a new feature from director Rachel Morrison.

Starring Ryan Destiny as Claressa and Brian Tyree Henry as her coach, the film follows Shields from Flint, Michigan through her training to become the first woman in this country’s history to win an Olympic gold medal in the sport.

“Somebody reached out to me two months before the second Olympics,” Shields explains at a global press conference for the film. The boxer had some questions about the plot, and more specifically, what the story was going to cover. “I was just asking them, so where are you guys gonna start in my life? Where are you guys going to finish in the movie about my life? Because I had [a] documentary.”

Shield’s documentary ‘T-Rex’ followed the Michigan native for about four years, from the ages of 16 to 20. The hour-and-a-half look into her life showed her path to the Olympics, but she wanted a fuller picture for the feature.

“People left the documentary ‘T-Rex’ thinking that I won a gold medal and that was it…[I had] no endorsements, no sponsorships, living in poverty. And I just was like, well, now with the movie that’s gonna be worldwide, I need it to where people understand. Don’t leave out any of the bad stuff. Put it all in there,” Shields continues.

“But just know, this isn’t a sad story. This is a very resilient story. I feel like this is a very fateful and a hopeful story. I don’t want nobody feeling sorry for me because I don’t feel sorry for myself. But I want them to know, I went through this, I went through that. Almost quit here. Almost gave up there. But look at where I am now. And being 29 years old.”

Rachel Morrison signed on to direct ‘The Fire Inside’ once she found out about Shields—and she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t heard it before.

“Claressa is such a badass force and an incredible athlete. And I follow sports, so for me to not know it, it felt like there was something wrong in the universe,” Morrison explains.

“I’d been reading for a long time and looking for something that felt, you know, meaningful and additive in the universe and that I could be additive to. There were things that I saw from my experiences being a female DP that I could put into it as well. But really it’s just Claressa’s story deserved to be out there.”

Along with Shields’ story, actor Bryan Tyree Henry is tackling another figure from the boxing world—Coach Jason Crutchfield.

“I think every actor with their weight in salt looks for that moment where we get to actually play somebody that’s real, that’s actually living and breathing. But so rarely do you get a chance to do it where they’re still making history, where they’re still doing what they do,” Tyree Henry explains.

“I wanted to explore what that relationship was like with Jason because, you know, he is a character and a man that we so rarely see projected in cinema. This mentor, this man that is still in Flint doing this for the kids, not for fame, not for fortune, but because it’s what he wants to do. I know that I needed to see role models like that, especially portrayed in cinema. I needed to feel like I was giving back to my mentors that did that for me.”

Ryan Destiny signed on with the project for similar reasons. Recently, the actress was also nominated for Best Lead Performance at the 2025 Indie ‘Spirit Awards’ for the feature.

“People left the documentary ‘T-Rex’ thinking that I won a gold medal and that was it…[I had] no endorsements, no sponsorships, living in poverty. And I just was like, well, now with the movie that’s gonna be worldwide, I need it to where people understand. Don’t leave out any of the bad stuff. Put it all in there,” Shields continues.

“But just know, this isn’t a sad story. This is a very resilient story. I feel like this is a very fateful and a hopeful story. I don’t want nobody feeling sorry for me because I don’t feel sorry for myself. But I want them to know, I went through this, I went through that. Almost quit here. Almost gave up there. But look at where I am now. And being 29 years old.”

Rachel Morrison signed on to direct ‘The Fire Inside’ once she found out about Shields—and she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t heard it before.

“Claressa is such a badass force and an incredible athlete. And I follow sports, so for me to not know it, it felt like there was something wrong in the universe,” Morrison explains.

“I’d been reading for a long time and looking for something that felt, you know, meaningful and additive in the universe and that I could be additive to. There were things that I saw from my experiences being a female DP that I could put into it as well. But really it’s just Claressa’s story deserved to be out there.”

Along with Shields’ story, actor Bryan Tyree Henry is tackling another figure from the boxing world—Coach Jason Crutchfield.

“I think every actor with their weight in salt looks for that moment where we get to actually play somebody that’s real, that’s actually living and breathing. But so rarely do you get a chance to do it where they’re still making history, where they’re still doing what they do,” Tyree Henry explains.

“I wanted to explore what that relationship was like with Jason because, you know, he is a character and a man that we so rarely see projected in cinema. This mentor, this man that is still in Flint doing this for the kids, not for fame, not for fortune, but because it’s what he wants to do. I know that I needed to see role models like that, especially portrayed in cinema. I needed to feel like I was giving back to my mentors that did that for me.”

Ryan Destiny signed on with the project for similar reasons. Recently, the actress was also nominated for Best Lead Performance at the 2025 Indie ‘Spirit Awards’ for the feature.

Claressa Shields became a four-weight world champion in sensational fashion by stopping Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse in two rounds on Saturday in Detroit.

Shields, 29, claimed the WBC heavyweight and WBO light-heavyweight titles, unifying the 12st 7lb (175lb) division in the process.

The undefeated American floored Lepage-Joanisse three times in quick succession, beginning with a counter right-hand.

The referee stopped the contest after the third knockdown as Shields secured her first stoppage since 2017.

“The newfound power does feel good,” Shields said.

“I shocked myself, I’m not going to lie.”

The two-time Olympic gold medallist is now unbeaten in 15 pro fights and has held world titles at super-middleweight, middleweight and light-middleweight since turning pro in 2016.

The WBC title Shields won is classified as heavyweight by the sanctioning body, but it is contested at the light-heavyweight limit of 12st 7lb, hence why the fight was advertised as both at heavyweight and light-heavyweight.

Shields could defend her new title in her next bout or move back down in weight, with the likes of Liverpool fighter Natasha Jonas a possible opponent for her.

“I’ve had some great performances, but is it my best knockout? Absolutely,” Shields said.

“But is it my best performance? I have fought so many great fighters and I have looked very, very good.”

Shields said that she had “10 days to decide” if she would continue at heavyweight, adding that while she thinks she can “campaign at any weight class”, she would discuss her next move with her team.

Claressa Shields is perhaps in the prime of her career, establishing a big enough name as a two-time Olympic gold medalist and world champion in three weight classes to headline the first boxing card in the six-year history of Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena.

The undisputed middleweight champion became the first woman to earn a seven-figure payday in her last two fights and made another $1 million on Saturday night when she beat top-ranked contender Maricela Cornejo at the home of the Detroit Red Wings and Pistons.

Shields grew up poor in Flint, Michigan, and has earned enough money to become rich at 28. Still, she laments the gender inequities in boxing.

“We don’t get the equal TV time, the equal promotion, equal pay. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do with my platform and make sure that I get all of that,” Shields said earlier this week in an interview with The Associated Press.

Shields is boxing in a marquee event in part because sports-streaming service DAZN stepped up enough financially to facilitate the fight.

Women in boxing have shown they can sell out big arenas, as Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano did 13 months ago at New York’s Madison Square Garden, but they’re not compensated as well as men in the same sport.

“It’s like any other profession where the women still haven’t caught up,” said Jackie Kallen, a 77-year-old former boxing publicist and manager who was commissioner of the International Female Boxing Association. “They take a beating just like the men. They bleed just like the men, but they don’t get paid just like the men.”

Shields is 13-0 with two knockouts. She turned pro in 2016 after becoming the first U.S. boxer of any gender to win consecutive Olympic gold medals and is averaging two fights a year.

Shields also is on a mission to be recognized as the “Greatest Woman Of All Time,” or the “GWOAT,” now and in the future.

“People that say that women’s boxing don’t have fans, well, they’re going to be mad Saturday,” she said.