Battle of Divas: Heavy-Hitter Franchon Crews-Dezurn Victorious Over Maricela Cornejo

 

By Felipe Leon

 

LOS ANGELES-For reasons like this, Larry Merchant, the legendary commentator formerly of HBO, poignantly dubbed boxing the “theater of the unexpected.”

 

After weeks of promoting the first defense of WBC super middleweight champion Baltimore, Maryland’s Franchon “Heavy-Hitting Diva” Crews-Dezurn against Mexican Alejandra Jimenez (12-0-1, 9KO), the current WBC heavyweight champion, on the undercard of the Munguia-Allotey card, Golden Boy Promotions had to make a hard left turn the week of the fight.

 

Jimenez of Mexico City, Mexico, was unable to secure her visa to enter the United States to challenge for her second world title in as many divisions and had to pull out of the fight a day before the official weigh-in scheduled for Friday.

 

Enter Maricela “La Diva” Cornejo.

 

“It was a lot,” Crews-Dezurn said of the change of the opponent.  “Even from the beginning when it was announced I was going to fight my original opponent, I had issues with it.  It is an elephant in the room.  I said I am going to prepare the best I can and just go for it because I am a fearless champion.”

 

“The day before I am supposed to fight they say they have Maricela to fight me,” she elaborated.  “I thought this was a set-up.  I know I didn’t prepare for an opponent, I prepared to do battle against whoever.”

 

With only about a week removed from a trip to Israel, the Mexican-American from the state of Washington (but fighting out of Los Angeles, CA) jumped on the opportunity and got the rematch she and her team where asking for.

 

No love lost between Crews-Dezurn (6-1, 2KO) and Cornejo (13-4, 5KO) who first met almost a year ago to the day in Las Vegas, NV, where Crews-Dezurn, 32, took a majority decision over the also 32-year-old Cornejo for the vacant green and gold strap.

 

“She has her own issues,” Crews-Dezurn said of Cornejo.  “I am not going to bad-mouth her because I am a classy person but she doesn’t deserve my energy.  I think she is in for the wrong reasons and you can see that when you look at the type of fighters we are.”

 

Many ringside, as well as the tuned-in fans, saw a clear win for the Baltimore native despite the questionable 95-95 scorecard by one judge in their first fight.

 

Tonight in the rematch, Crews-Dezurn added the vacant WBO title to her WBC belt with a dominant unanimous decision over 10 rounds with scores of 98-92 twice and 97-93.

 

“This is what I manifested, this is what I worked for,” Crews-Dezurn said after the fight about becoming the unified super middleweight champion.  “I worked very hard, everybody knows I started as a pro 0-1 and now I own half of the super middleweight division.”

 

Crews-Dezurn began where she left off a year ago, coming out aggressively at the first bell.  She quickly found a home for her overhand right as Cornejo backed up while moving around the perimeter of the ring.

 

Cornejo displayed good defense in the first half of the fight, moving laterally while showing good head movement, looking to slip the right hands of the defending champion.  Crews-Dezurn kept pushing forward, catching Cornejo more than once with her back against the ropes and scoring devastating overhand rights that snapped Cornejo’s head to the side.

 

The “Heavy-Hitting Diva” kept control of the center of the ring for the majority of the two-minute rounds while making that right hand, whether straight or curved, her weapon of choice.  Nothing was working for Cornejo in the first five rounds, as she wasn’t able to keep Crews-Dezurn at bay.  Cornejo seemed to have trouble gauging the distance between the two while flicking out a jab that never really landed.

 

The pro-Mexican crowd tried to inspire Cornejo by cheering every time she would land a punch, but that was far from constant.

 

In the fourth, Cornejo began to have some success as she planted herself a bit more and scored with her left hand.  “La Diva” was able to land a couple of stiff jabs in the round that snapped Crews-Dezurn’s head back but didn’t deter the champion from pressuring.  To prove she was still in control, Crews-Dezurn landed a left hook followed by a right hand flush to end the round.

 

Fatigue began to settle in the second half of the fight and the clinching between the two was more often with Cornejo initiating the majority of it.  It didn’t help that Crews-Dezurn would rush in and almost land in her slightly taller opponent’s arms.

 

Cornejo began to slow down and Crews-Dezurn took advantage by looking to score three punch combinations.  Cornejo had her moments in the sixth and seventh rounds, scoring right hands while also doing some damage in the more frequent exchanges.

 

“She is a two-trick pony,” Crews-Dezurn said of her opponent’s style.  “I was just trying not to get hit with the dumb stuff so I just did what I had to do.”

 

In the eighth, in a display of frustration, Cornejo hit Crews-Dezurn with a blatant rabbit punch following a clinch. That prompted referee Tom Taylor to issue a stern warning to the Mexican-American.

 

“I always feel like the underdog so I just try to keep it clean,” Crews-Dezurn answered when asked why she didn’t retaliate.  “I just need one point to be taken from me and there goes my whole fight.”

 

The last third of the fight fell into a pattern with Crews-Dezurn stalking Cornejo around the ring and landing big overhand rights.

 

The fight ended just as it began, with an aggressive Crews-Dezurn landing the harder, more telling punches and with a combination that snapped Cornejo’s head back.

 

“As you can see, I was more clean this fight,” Crews-Dezurn said of her performance.  “She held a lot but I just tried to work through it.  It was a lot of pressure on me, it is Mexican Independence Day and everybody wants a happy ending but this is for boxing and I wanted to put on a good show, and I am happy after it is all said and done, the people embraced me.”

 

Another American fighter, Alicia “The Empress” Napoleon of New York, holds the WBA title.

 

“I got a good promotional company and they have a bag to push,” she said regarding getting Napoleon in the ring soon.  “We throw that money out and she is not a spring-chicken so she has a lot to gain but you are going to risk a lot.  We’ll see.”

 

(Photo by Al Applerose)