Clarissa Shields Responds to Nunes’ “Wrestle the Sh*t Out of You” Warning

Clarissa Shields heard Amanda Nunes’ warning that she would “wrestle the shit out of” her if Shields ever stepped into the Octagon against her, and she remains undeterred.

It was revealed Friday that Clarissa Shields is aiming to make her mixed martial arts debut in 2020, this coming after she expressed interest in fighting Amanda Nunes in both boxing and MMA. Amanda Nunes has already responded to the boxing challenge, making it clear that she is solely an MMA fighter, and that if Shields wants to scrap, it will be on Nunes’s terms, which come joined with a “wrestle the shit out of you” clause. Shields took much away from Nunes’s comment and believes it reveals much about the confidence of “The Lioness…” or the lack thereof.

“Just the fact that she already said no says that I’m already in her head,” Shields told BJPenn.com. “She knows that she can’t beat me in boxing and now, even going inside the cage, she’s going to have that in her head as well, ‘I can’t beat her in boxing, I have to take her to the ground and try to wrestle her’. That’s gonna be her downfall because I know her game plan now. She should’ve just kept it to herself.”

Shields went on to explain why she proposed the fight take place in the boxing realm, and it boils down to simple math: between MMA and boxing, only one sport contains parts of the other; thus, that would be the fairer sport to have the fight for both parties. But if Nunes is keen on having the bout at MMA, Shields is quite satisfied for Nunes to have it her way.

“MMA contains boxing, boxing doesn’t contain MMA,” Shields said. “That’s why I thought the fight would be more fair with boxing. I can understand her feeling like she’s coming in at a disadvantage in boxing, so that’s why I said I would gladly learn some jiu-jitsu and some wrestling, and I already know how to box. So I would get in the cage and do it on that side, just to make it fair. Because Mayweather beat up McGregor in boxing, but who knows how Mayweather would do in the cage against McGregor?”

Clarissa Shields had the opportunity to watch Amanda Nunes compete at UFC 245 last month in her victory over Germaine de Randamie, and Shields concluded that her hand speed is the biggest difference between herself and Nunes and theorizes that she also probably punches harder due to her size advantage over Nunes. But even though Shields acknowledges her boxing advantages over Nunes, she still considers Nunes’s vow to wrestle to be contradictory of her Octagon fighting preference. She also feels that if Nunes thinks that a fight against her will be a cake walk just by wrestling instead of boxing, the UFC double champion has another thing coming.

“How can you say you don’t like boxing when you clearly knock girls out in MMA?” Shields asked. “You’re knocking girls out with your hands. It was kind of confusing, and it shows where her heart is at. Then she went into the whole, ‘I’ll drag her down to the ground and I’ll submit her’, she’s gonna have to back all that s**t up once I start learning some s**t. I’m not going to take that lightly.

“I’m taking this very serious and she’s going to have to back up everything she’s said. You’re gonna choke me out, you’re gonna submit me? I want to see her do it.”