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The first time boxer Claressa Shields watched The Fire Inside, a cinematic rendering of her life story which releases in theaters on Dec. 25, she tried to take away herself from the equation. She pretended the story was about another athlete from Flint, Mich. rising up in poverty and chasing an Olympic dream. Shields deliberate to look at the movie with a impartial eye, and provides it a grade, as she usually likes to do when viewing sports activities flicks.
This train lasted all of 10 minutes. “I undoubtedly put myself into it,” says Shields. Who wouldn’t, when watching themselves depicted on the display? The efficiency of Ryan Destiny, who portrayed Shields, shocked the two-time gold medalist: she was capable of seize Shields’ mannerisms, each inside and outdoors the ring. Shields, in each The Fire Inside and in actual life, overcame a tough childhood—and doubts concerning the appropriateness of feminine fighters within the ring—to change into America’s first feminine boxing gold medalist, on the debut of Olympic girls’s boxing on the London 2012 Games. She’s additionally America’s first and solely back-to-back Olympic boxing champion, as she gained once more 4 years later in Rio. And at present, Shields ranks as the highest pound-for-pound skilled boxer on the planet, in accordance with ESPN.
“I used to be identical to, ‘wow, have a look at the place we began, and have a look at the place we are actually,’” Shields, 29, tells TIME. “This is the way you flip your ache into energy.”
The Fire Inside successfully packs two movies into one. While many motion pictures would have ended with Shields profitable the gold medal in London, to neatly wrap the standard rags-to-riches redemption story, The Fire Inside—which was written by Barry Jenkins, director and co-writer of the 2016 best-picture Oscar winner Moonlight—takes viewers to an often-unexplored place: the months following an Olympic triumph, which for much too many athletes outdoors high-visibility sports activities like gymnastics and swimming is full of disappointment, and generally despair. The anticipated monetary windfalls typically by no means come. They query the purpose of their pursuits.
Films regarding sports activities advertising and marketing don’t sound buzzy on the floor. But The Fire Inside hits a robust notice. After her London triumph a dozen years in the past, Shields didn’t match the “girl-next-door” invoice that manufacturers had been on the lookout for in sports activities endorsers. Women’s sports activities weren’t as standard as they’re now, and girls’s boxing was nonetheless a curiosity. The film captures Shields’ wrestle to capitalize on her athletic achievements.
Though the story concludes with triumph. Women’s boxing has grown over the previous decade-plus. Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor, for instance, had been the co-main occasion to the extensively panned Jake Paul-Mike Tyson bout on Netflix final month; the rematch of their 2022 Madison Square Garden traditional was watched by practically 50 million households all over the world, in accordance with Netflix. And Shields now repeatedly makes $1 million for her bouts. “All girls are completely different and it is OK to be your true self,” says Shields. “They might haven’t accepted me then. But they undoubtedly have to simply accept me now.”
Such a cheerful ending appeared far-fetched for Shields after these London Olympics. The Fire Inside depicts one low second, which Shields says truly occurred: she’s again in Flint, looking for diapers at night time for her toddler nephew, when she spots within the grocery store aisle different Olympians on the quilt of cereal containers. She additionally remembers feeling heartbreak when 4 American Olympic gold medalists— observe stars Carmelita Jeter, Allyson Felix, Sonia Richards-Ross and gymnast Gabby Douglas—graced the quilt of Essence journal’s 2012 Women of the Year situation. “It was very hurtful,” says Shields. “It wasn’t anger, it was only a unhappiness that I had, pondering that my gold medal didn’t weigh as a lot as theirs. Knowing that my sport is the toughest sport on this planet to do, nevertheless it’s not revered by everyone else. I used to be nonetheless completely happy for the opposite women. But I want I might have been in that image with them.”
Shields didn’t go to a pawn store to attempt to promote her gold medal, as portrayed within the film, solely to be stopped by a Good Samaritan salesman who known as Shields’ mom when she made the provide. “I’d by no means take my gold medal to a pawn store,” she says. She did, nonetheless, lock her prize away in a protected for a interval. “You win a gold medal on the age of 17, and also you did not get what you deserve,” says Shields. “I sort of wished to depart that behind me and hold shifting ahead.” She additionally went right down to the Flint River with plans of tossing it within the water, earlier than household and pals intervened.
“I feel the pawn store sort of changed going to the Flint River,” she says.
And sure, Shields did truly spar along with her boyfriend as a teen. In the movie, a romance develops between Shields and her boxing coaching accomplice, named Zay: in actual life, Zay’s title is Ardreal Holmes Jr. They grew up boxing collectively, and he was Shields’ first boyfriend. They dated, she says, between the time she was 16 and 21. He’s additionally a professional boxer: Holmes Jr., a southpaw, gained his final struggle, a 10-round choice, on Dec. 12 in Flint.
Shields’ subsequent struggle is Feb. 2, additionally in Flint: the reigning World Boxing Council (WBC) and World Boxing Organization (WBO) Champion will struggle the undefeated Danielle Perkins for the vacant World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight title. “With the film popping out about my life, folks suppose that I’m retired,” says Shields. “I’m not a retired fighter. I’m nonetheless very a lot lively, very a lot a world champion, very a lot defending my world titles. So keep tuned.”
As for her completely eliminated, unbiased, impartial and goal sports activities film grade for A Fire Inside?
“A-plus-plus.”
