Franchon Crews-Dezurn Beats Shadasia Green in Trench Warfare for WBC Title

By David A. Avila

Never count out the “Heavy Hittin Diva.”

Franchon Crews-Dezurn, a former undisputed champion, proved experience can overcome the odds in handing Shadasia Green a loss and winning back the WBC super middleweight title by unanimous decision on Friday.

“I want to give a shout out to Shadasia and her team,” said Crews-Dezurn. “She’s an incredible fighter.”

Despite being a 7 to 1 underdog, Crews-Dezurn (9-2, 2 Kos) forced trench warfare against Green (13-1, 11 Kos) in front of a packed house at Caribe Royale Orlando in Orlando, Florida. It wasn’t pretty but a fight is a fight.

Battling primarily inside, she disabled Green’s more technical style into a scrum fought nose to nose with no room to unleash blows from afar. It was exactly the kind of contest the fighter from Baltimore prefers.

Throughout the 10 rounds Crews attacked and smothered the blows of Green who was accustomed to blasting out foes from a distance. Against Crews-Dezurn, that distance was nullified and allowed the former champion to work inside.

For every punch Green landed, Crews answered with twice that amount at times. And though the undefeated fighter was known for packing power, those blows were unable to crack the former champions will.

Green had some success with sneaky uppercuts on the inside, but after landing midway through the match, Crews-Dezurn found the antidote and was simply the busier fighter in most of the 10 rounds.

Experience paid dividends for the former champion.

Though the former champion has two losses in her ledger, those came against the great Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall. Neither fighter was able to inflict heavy damage against Crews-Dezurn when they fought. Green found similar failure. But those fighters were able to outscore Crews.

After 10 rounds all three judges scored in favor of Crews-Dezurn 97-93 twice and 98-92. Franchon recaptures one of the belts lost to Marshall this past July.

“Shout out to Savannah Marshall who was rooting for me,” Crews-Dezurn said. “We can punch each other’s lights out, but overall, we have the same struggles.”

Once again Crews-Dezurn is a champion.