Before Danielle Perkins was a heavyweight title contender, and even before she was a Division I basketball player, she was a chess enthusiast at her after-school program. It’s a hobby she maintains today, one that at first glance seems more in line with her other profession as the manager of a multi-million-dollar portfolio than it is with being a 6’0”, 190-pound slugger. But it’s a passion that has helped create a framework for how she operates inside the ring, and how she thinks about her boxing pursuit.

As any chess player will tell you, it’s helpful to play against people who are both beneath your level and those above it. The former can teach you how to win and take advantage of certain mistakes your opponent makes, the latter can teach you about what mistakes you make yourself and how to correct them. The sweet spot, some say, is to try to play against folks who are about 100 to 200 points above you in the rating system, someone experienced and talented enough to challenge you, but not place you entirely out of your depth. In a nutshell, this is also the ideal matchmaking approach when developing a professional boxer.

Unfortunately for the 42-year old Perkins, that ideal path hasn’t been available to her in her professional boxing career. Not for a lack of trying on her part, or from her promoter King’s Promotions or her former advisor Mark Taffet, but because of the realities of the women’s boxing landscape above 168 pounds. According to BoxRec, there are presently only 18 active women’s heavyweight boxers, and only eight of them have records above .500. If you extend that pool to the light heavyweight division—something sanctioning bodies have started to do, amalgamating the two divisions—there are 47 total fighters. Perkins has defeated four of them—beating Monika Harrison twice—and at 5-0 is already the at the top of the rankings beneath the one active titleholder in the division (more on her momentarily).

As a world amateur champion, having won gold in 2019, Perkins went from facing not just elites on a regular basis, but some women whom she describes as the size of WNBA centers, to fights in which she did not feel challenged whatsoever.

“I beat several world champions who had a lot of experience, and they’ve always given me like in terms of response, what I was looking for, like very intelligent fighters making the fights high level, making me have to make serious adjustments, made the game constantly chess, which I really enjoyed. And I was looking for that in the pros,” said Perkins, contrasting that with her experience sans headgear. “A good chunk of it is, you know, you train for a certain response, and you train for, you know, a certain level, and when they don't give you that, you're just like, did you did you train? What was your expectation of this fight? Like it's just like so many different things playing to your mind. And then I'm like, oh, shit, did I turn the stove off? You know, like those things enter your mind and I'm like 'I should be focusing.' And then you'll hear my corner constantly say, 'Danielle, focus.' (I tell them) I am doing my very best,” said Perkins, contrasting that with her experience in the amateurs.

Perkins’ frustrations with her time in the pros are more than valid. Between her second win over Harrison in 2021 and her 2024 win over Timea Nagy, no opportunities materialized whatsoever. Long, exhaustive negotiations to try to secure a fight against Hanna Gabriels netted nothing in return, leading her to question whether a career in professional boxing was viable for her whatsoever. Luckily for her, there have always been layers to both her identity and her finances, stemming from her ability to balance demands as a student athlete during her time at St. John’s University, which preceded time overseas playing pro ball as well. As a member of Team USA, Perkins says she was holding down her day job, studying for her MBA (which she has since received) and going through a divorce simultaneously. Ultimately, she decided that not only was it financially viable given her successes, but that it was emotionally viable as well, as boxing was the joy in her life whether she was competing or not.

“There were days when I was just like, you know, because I never stopped going to the gym. I never stopped training. And like, the support of my team really kind of helped my mental state. But there were some days I was just like, I'm just going to go on vacation and not come back. You know? I mean, I'm like, who would notice? But also, why would I quit? If nothing's happening, I still love boxing. And I say that to like all the amateurs at our gym. I don't want anything from boxing. Just love it. And if something comes of it, something comes of it. But you've got to really love the sport of boxing,” said Perkins. “My place in boxing is always because I know what I look like. I know that I pose a threat. And then if you watch film, you're like, what the hell is this? Like, this moves a lot. It's really fast. It's really long. It hits hard. Like, what am I looking at? No one ever walks away and says this is an easy fight.”

One of the motivating forces in her life has been Claressa Shields, who has been a good friend of hers since their days in the amateurs. Shields has been influential in getting Perkins spots on the undercard of shows she’s headlined with promoter Dmitriy Salita. Salita also has a close working relationship with Perkins’ advisor Taffet (and once co-promoted Perkins himself), who also manages Shields. In many ways, Perkins took the torch from Shields in the US women’s amateur system, becoming the first US fighter to win a world amateur championship since Shields’ victory in 2016.

As has been well-documented over the years, Shields experienced many of the same struggles Perkins endured during her rise to glory in the pro ranks in terms of finding challenges. At 154, 160 and 168 pounds, Shields found more luck than Perkins did (Perkins joked that her liver would fail if she cut to 168 herself), managing to have legacy-enhancing bouts against Gabriels, Christina Hammer and Savannah Marshall, among others. However, now Shields is up in the land of giants, after winning the WBC heavyweight crown (and WBO light heavyweight title) with a knockout win over Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse in July.

Shields’ options for title fights at heavyweight were mostly confined to a Gabriels rematch or a bout against IBF light heavyweight titleholder Lani Daniels. But in a recent face-off video on the Salita Promotions YouTube, Shields expressed that she was both annoyed but also intrigued by Gabriels’ behavior in negotiations. She felt as though Gabriels was dragging her feet in negotiations with Perkins and providing reasons why she couldn’t fight her, but then calling Shields out.

"Honestly, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, 'What was so scary about Danielle Perkins that made her turn down the fight two or three times?'," said Shields. "It's something about Danielle Perkins. Hannah Gabriels kept catching COVID and kept saying she was sick, and now that she's not sick, she's calling me out and not giving Danielle Perkins the opportunity that Danielle Perkins earned."

Ultimately, her desire for justice and need for an opponent that was not just marketable but also competitively interesting for her drove Shields to arrange a fight against her friend. Although Shields was able to turn on her customary braggadocio during the face-off segment, it was also notable to see The GWOAT laughing along with her opponent, proof of a genuine friendship.

"I've never really felt pressure in fights except this one. So, it's a big deal. I'm against, you know, 6'2", amateur, decorated, strong, tall. And, you know, somebody who I see, and I've never felt that she saw me in person and ever been intimidated," said Shields. "I've never felt any fear from her. So that's something that you got to take serious in itself. So it's the biggest fight in the world to me."

The two will battle on February 2 at the Dort Financial Center in Shields’ hometown of Flint, Michigan, headlining an event promoted by Salita Promotions and aired on DAZN, with the undisputed heavyweight crown on the line—all four sanctioning body titles up for grabs. It no doubt represents the biggest women’s heavyweight bout in history, and is aided by the publicity surrounding The Fire Inside, a Shields biopic in the midst of its widespread theatrical release as we speak.

"It's business. It's no hard feelings. She's a friend, but unfortunately, business trumps that at this moment," said Perkins. "I would love to have a card with me and Claressa on it, not necessarily fighting each other, maybe later on. But business right now is important. Like, this has to be done, and I'm so grateful, because without Claressa actually doing this fight, I have said it plenty of times, no one cares about the heavyweight division. No one. If I was fighting on her undercard and she was fighting for another championship, people would more than likely be like, yeah, the girl that fought before Claressa, she's all right. No one would care."

For a chess enthusiast like Perkins, the bout represents the equivalent of jumping from her nights teaching her girlfriend how to play chess to playing against Magnus Carlsen for the world championship. Despite that, aside from the moment she found out about the fight, when she admits she cried tears of joy for one of the first times in her life, Perkins has remained remarkably even-keeled emotionally during the build-up.

That stoicism in the face of immense danger, but also the patience required to have earned this fight in the first place, is in part rooted in a pair of near-death experiences. In 2008, while awaiting a trip to Turkey to join a new pro team overseas, Perkins was struck by a car in Brooklyn while crossing the street to go to the bodega to buy some papaya. Her injuries were nearly unthinkable: a fractured skull, a dislocated neck, a dislocated shoulder, and extensive nerve damage below the waist. At the peak of her athleticism, Perkins was paralyzed, learning to walk once again. At her lowest point, Perkins contemplated taking her own life, but found both a modality of physical recovery and mental rehabilitation through the sport of boxing.

Less than a decade later, a year before winning bronze at Worlds and two years before winning gold, Perkins was involved in a motorcycle accident while travelling at 70 miles per hour, sustaining body-wide road rash after flipping over her bike, which was completely totalled. As she was flying through the air, she says she didn’t think about her mortality, but that her last words were a rather casual “oh this sucks.” The remanence of the accident is still visible when Perkins is disrobed at weigh-ins, but just barely, thanks to a painful routine of picking her scabs for weeks following the accident to ensure the skin would fully heal.

“I mean when you don't have a fear of dying, a lot of things just don't matter as much. You know, like I said once you get to that point in life, you're like, you know death is a part of life and you just accept it. You're more calm, you know, less anxiety, a lot less fear,” said Perkins. “It's like the little things in life are not, they don't matter as much, you know? Like enjoy the moment, you're in the moment, you're in the moment that you have, stay present, stay focused. If you are, if you have a short-term goal long-term goal, like you know, to want a rush through things and skip steps and be anxious about it, it's not going to get you there any faster.”

Inside the ring on February 2 though, Perkins may wind up fighting antithetically to her worldview. Both she and Shields have expressed excitement about the possibility of a true slugfest, a test of will, “a war in Flint.” As she vies for the crown, Perkins prepares to open with her own Queen’s Gambit—in boxing, as in chess, apply pressure, control the center.

What happens after that? It’s easy to label a potential victory as a life-changing moment, but experience and a knowledge of emotional self-preservation are guarding Perkins into defining it that way herself.

"I only place myself as the new. That's it. What happens if nothing happens afterwards? I'm fine with that, you know what I mean? Like the expectation that my life changes--changes into what? You know what I mean? It could be that now, no one is never, ever going to fight you now. You're never going to get a fight now because you beat Claressa Shields. That is a huge possibility, which I don't want to think about. That you'll be on this loop for the rest of your life."