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American Top Team owner Dan Lambert gives his take on the possible crossover fight between Amanda Nunes and boxing champion Claressa Shields.
Undefeated boxing champion Claressa Shields has been talking about crossing over to MMA and fight two-division champion Amanda Nunes. For her part, “The Lioness” already welcomes the idea of wrestling and submitting Shields.
For American Top Team owner Dan Lambert, Shields does not stand a chance.
“Claressa would probably get smashed,” Lamber told MMA Fighting. “I mean why didn’t Floyd [Mayweather] want to fight Conor in MMA? I give Claressa less chances of beating Amanda in MMA than I gave Conor beating Floyd [in boxing]. It’s not her sport.
“You can’t go a lifetime of training in boxing with no sprawling and no wrestling and no grappling. How do you expect someone like that to cross over? I guess you’ve got that one in a million miracle shot that could land. I don’t know.”
But if Nunes crossed over in boxing, Lambert is liking her chances.
“Claressa would be a monster favorite in a boxing match,” he said. “I think Amanda’s a unique specimen with how hard she hits. As a female fighter, I think she’s kind of a unicorn when it comes to that, so I would say the gap between the two is much narrower if Amanda were to challenge a boxer than if a boxer would challenge an MMA fighter.”
Nunes defended the women’s bantamweight title for the fifth time against Germaine de Randamie at UFC 245 early this month.