Boxer Claressa Shields on How The Fire Inside Captures Her Real Life Story

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 remove herself from the equation. She pretended the story was about some other athlete from Flint, Mich. growing up in poverty and chasing an Olympic dream. Shields planned to watch the film with a neutral eye, and give it a grade, as she typically likes to do when viewing sports flicks.

This exercise lasted all of 10 minutes. “I definitely put myself into it,” says Shields. Who wouldn’t, when watching themselves depicted on the screen? The performance of Ryan Destiny, who portrayed Shields, stunned the two-time gold medalist: she was able to capture Shields’ mannerisms, both inside and outside the ring. Shields, in both The Fire Inside and in real life, overcame a difficult childhood—and doubts about the appropriateness of female fighters in the ring—to become America’s first female boxing gold medalist, at the debut of Olympic women’s boxing at the London 2012 Games. She’s also America’s first and only back-to-back Olympic boxing champion, as she won again four years later in Rio. And currently, Shields ranks as the top pound-for-pound professional boxer on the planet, according to ESPN.

“I was just like, ‘wow, look at where we started, and look at where we are now,’” Shields, 29, tells TIME. “This is how you turn your pain into power.” 

The Fire Inside effectively packs two films into one. While many movies would have ended with Shields winning the gold medal in London, to neatly wrap the traditional 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 far too many athletes outside high-visibility sports like gymnastics and swimming is filled with disappointment, and sometimes despair. The expected financial windfalls often never come. They question the point of their pursuits. 

Films concerning sports marketing don’t sound buzzy on the surface. But The Fire Inside hits a strong note. After her London triumph a dozen years ago, Shields didn’t fit the “girl-next-door” bill that brands were looking for in sports endorsers. Women’s sports weren’t as popular as they are now, and women’s boxing was still a curiosity. The movie captures Shields’ struggle to capitalize on her athletic achievements.

Though the story concludes with triumph. Women’s boxing has grown over the past decade-plus. Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor, for example, were the co-main event to the widely panned Jake Paul-Mike Tyson bout on Netflix last month; the rematch of their 2022 Madison Square Garden classic was watched by nearly 50 million households around the world, according to Netflix. And Shields now regularly makes $1 million for her bouts. “All women are different and it's OK to be your true self,” says Shields. “They may have not accepted me then. But they definitely have to accept me now.” 

Such a happy ending seemed far-fetched for Shields after those London Olympics. The Fire Inside depicts one low moment, which Shields says actually happened: she’s back in Flint, shopping for diapers at night for her infant nephew, when she spots in the supermarket aisle other Olympians on the cover of cereal boxes. She also recalls feeling heartbreak when four American Olympic gold medalists— track stars Carmelita Jeter, Allyson Felix, Sonia Richards-Ross and gymnast Gabby Douglas—graced the cover of Essence magazine’s 2012 Women of the Year issue. “It was very hurtful,” says Shields. “It wasn’t anger, it was just a sadness that I had, thinking that my gold medal didn’t weigh as much as theirs. Knowing that my sport is the hardest sport in the world to do, but it’s not respected by everybody else. I was still happy for the other girls. But I wish I could have been in that picture with them.” 

Shields did not go to a pawn shop to try to sell her gold medal, as portrayed in the movie, only to be stopped by a Good Samaritan salesman who called Shields’ mother when she made the offer. “I would never take my gold medal to a pawn shop,” she says. She did, however, lock her prize away in a safe for a period. “You win a gold medal at the age of 17, and you didn't get what you deserve,” says Shields. “I kind of wanted to leave that behind me and keep moving forward.” She also went down to the Flint River with plans of tossing it in the water, before family and friends intervened. 

“I think the pawn shop kind of replaced going to the Flint River,” she says.

And yes, Shields did actually spar with her boyfriend as a teenager. In the film, a romance develops between Shields and her boxing training partner, named Zay: in real life, Zay’s name is Ardreal Holmes Jr. They grew up boxing together, and he was Shields’ first boyfriend. They dated, she says, between the time she was 16 and 21. He’s also a pro boxer: Holmes Jr., a southpaw, won his last fight, a 10-round decision, on Dec. 12 in Flint.

Shields’ next fight is Feb. 2, also in Flint: the reigning World Boxing Council (WBC) and World Boxing Organization (WBO) Champion will fight the undefeated Danielle Perkins for the vacant World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight title. “With the movie coming out about my life, people think that I'm retired,” says Shields. “I'm not a retired fighter. I'm still very much active, very much a world champion, very much defending my world titles. So stay tuned.”

As for her totally removed, unbiased, neutral and objective sports movie grade for A Fire Inside?

“A-plus-plus.”