Claressa Shields might have found a storm blowing around British boxing when she flew into London this week but she does not believe that the bad publicity around Conor Ben's positive drugs test will have any impact on her world middleweight title fight with Savannah Marshall.

This weekend's doubleheader, also featuring Mikaela Mayer against Alycia Baumgardner - which was delayed from September 10 after the death of Queen Elizabeth II - takes place at the O2 Arena, which should have staged the Benn-Chris Eubank Jr fight last weekend. Shields, though, has not been aware of any lingering bad feeling aimed at this Saturday's action.

"It might be a black eye for UK boxing, but it is not a black eye for us," Shields said. "This is about us. All of us are clean athletes, all of us have passed our tests.  

"We are showing the best versus the best, these are fights that people want to see. People all over the US and UK are going crazy for these fights. We are giving the fans the fights they want and not just one but two. We’re raising the bar and teaching the men a thing or two. Conor Benn doesn’t have a thing to do with us. This is our time to shine and that is definitely not a dark cloud over us."

The American is certainly not lacking motivation to beat Marshall, though, in a rivalry that stretches back more than ten years when Marshall became the first and only boxer to beat Shields amateur or professional at the World Amateur Championships in Qinhuangdao, China.

The rivalry has become more intense of late with neither short on opinions about the other, but Shields is not about to take a step back in the face of what she sees as an attempt to bully her.

"I watched her build-up to Hannah Rankin and she bullied her the whole time online, how her and April (Hunter) talked trash to Hannah Rankin, just being really mean to her," Shields said. "And Hannah Rankin isn’t the type of person to give that kind of energy back, she is very kind, very sweet and that is why me and her are best friends, even though we fought each other.

"She thought she was going to put that same crap on me. No, I am the OG for real and you are not going to disrespect me ever, because I will smack you. If you want to go low, I will go lower. You are not going to bully me.

"She can’t bully me, she can’t out-talk me and she knows if she wants to get into something before the fight, I am all for it, I am not going to turn away. If she is going to get in my face or put her hands on me, or push me or slap me, I am going to go ten times more than that."

Meanwhile, Shields is refusing to rule out a return to competing in MMA next month if all things go well.

She had been lined up to compete in a Professional Fighters' League event in November, but the five-week delay to the Marshall fight makes that unlikely.

"Right now it is up in the air," Shields said. " It’s about how my body feels after the fight. I like to fight, I like to compete, we are just keeping it open for now.  

"If I had fought in September, I definitely would have fought in November, but now it is October 15. It is pushing it close, because I want to have time to prepare, time to rest, time to switch my mindset, because boxing and MMA are like apples and oranges."

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.