Quotes from Claressa Shields

I slept with my gold medal.

My grades started dropping, and when I sleep all day and come to the gym I'd have a slow day. I needed rules, I guess, in boxing and to just help me, period.

I got the nickname T-Rex when I was 11 years old. Back when I was younger, I was very skinny and I had short arms, but I used to always be swinging.

From my first fight, I loved being in the ring. I tune everything out - the lights, the smells, the noise - so I'm in this zone where I'm performing only for myself.

Fighting in Flint in front of all my fans has been a dream of mine since turning pro. Having the opportunity to make history by fighting for the undisputed title in a second weight division is something I'm very proud of.

I have a world championship medal from 2014, but I can't find it. So I'm missing one. I think it's at my sister's house. I have to find it.

Balancing around the holidays is something I've been doing for years. I saved a lot of money by not going home for Christmas, that's for sure. But I still spoke with all my family and connected with everyone.

Fighting against undefeated IBF 154-pound champion Marie-Eve Dicaire continues my quest to fight the very best in women's boxing.

Growing up in Flint, Michigan, I saw so many kids from my school end up in jail or unemployed, and gangs would hang out and cause trouble in my neighborhood. I had to learn how to protect myself, because it didn't feel like anyone else was protecting me.

When I was in juniors, I was fighting twice a year and going nine months without fighting.

If you're dedicated to something and you put the time in, why should anyone have an opinion on it? Halif of the people who comment about women's boxing don't even watch it.

Can't nobody else get in there and help you. Your coach, he can't get in the ring and fight with you. You don't have your dad, your mom. When you get in the ring, you don't have anybody but yourself.

I be thinking sometimes, maybe I'm just too hard on people. Maybe I want too much. But no, I don't. All my granny did was cook for me, tell me that she love me, gave me hugs every now and then.

Living in Flint, poverty is an obstacle that you have to fight through. I always had to fend for my brother and sister - I was always the one to sacrifice my meals so that they could eat.

If I wanted to curse you out, I would write everything I wanted to say to you in my diary, and it was like screaming in my head. After that, I would have no feelings for you; I wouldn't be mad at you or upset because I already said it to you when I wrote it down. That's what writing did for me.

Being a woman fighter, I can't just go out there and manhandle a girl, I need to be very strategic: Use my skills, head movement and defence, then seek and destroy.

Everybody kept saying I wasn't going to get any fights. And they wouldn't put me on TV and they don't respect women's boxing. But I also turned professional with two Olympic gold medals and that's something that no other American boxer has ever done. With that, I've been getting a lot of respect.

I still really haven't sat down and said 'yeah, I'm ranked No. 1 in the world and I'm an Olympic Gold Medalist.' It just hasn't hit me.

When I was 16, coming up through now at 24, it was so much I thought I had to change about myself. Especially after I won the Olympics.

At the Olympics, for those eight minutes of each fight, all that attention was on me. Either the crowd is with you or against you.

Kids in Flint don't even know that you can write to express your feelings and go to the gym and work out, you can run, you can do whatever you love to help relieve stress.

I have a healthy respect. The fact that I get ready for each opponent shows my respect.

I was angry because I see other kids with things that I wanted: they had good parents, they had clothes, they always had food and extra money, and I wasn't one of those kids.

The only thing that me and Muhammad Ali have in common is that we are both Olympic gold medalists and both very outspoken.