Savannah Rose Marshall (born 19 May 1991) is a British professional boxer who held the WBO female middleweight title between 2020 and 2022. As an amateur, she became the first British female world champion after securing gold at the 2012 World Championships. She has been nicknamed as the 'Silent Assassin' due to her shyness and her multiple knockout wins. As of October 2022, she is ranked as the world's second best active female middleweight by BoxRec and by The Ring. Early life Marshall is from Hartlepool in the North East of England. She attended the English Martyrs School, where she achieved 12 GCSEs before gaining a Distinction in a BTEC National Diploma in Sport at Hartlepool College. She began boxing aged 12, when she joined a local Hartlepool Headland club after seeing a boy showing off his trophy on the street and decided she wanted one. She went to her local boxing club with two of her girl friends however her friends only went once and decided not to go back. The club had no girls training at this time and had constantly tried to discourage Marshall. She stated that she thinks the trainer looked at her as 'an annoying little girl who kept on coming back' but she was determined, having fallen in love with the sport. They learned to accept her and began to support her. She sparred with the boys at her club. However, when going to other gyms to get sparring partners, it was a struggle. A head trainer of one gym pointed at Savannah and said "what's that? She is not sparring here" and Savannah had to sit and watch the session. Savannah describes herself as very competitive and wants to win at everything and is constantly in competition with training partner Hughie Fury. Amateur career Following her win in China at the 2012 AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships in Qinhuangdao, China, Marshall was a favourite to win gold at the 2012 London Olympics. However, she was defeated 16–12 by Marina Volnova of Kazakhstan in her opening, quarter-final bout with many feeling the occasion and expectation was too much for her to handle at the time. Marshall remains the only boxer ever to have defeated Claressa Shields, the middleweight women's gold medallist in the 2012 Olympics; the bout took place in the second round of the 2012 AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships in Qinhuangdao. At