Shadasia Green is determined to bring a second undisputed championship to the Most Valuable Promotions family.
At the very least, the unbeaten knockout artist is positioned to ruin big plans for several other parties.
BoxingScene.com has confirmed that the WBC has ordered a mandatory title fight between undisputed super middleweight queen Franchon Crews-Dezurn and Green as her number-one ranked challenger. The two sides have until April 28 to reach a deal and avoid a purse bid hearing, as first reported by ESPN’s Michael Rothstein.
Baltimore’s Crews-Dezurn (8-1, 2KOs) is represented in talks by Peter Kahn, the 2022 BWAA Manager of the Year. Green (12-0, 11KOs) signed with MVP—co-founded by Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian—prior to her Feb. 4 sixth-round knockout of former unified titlist Elin Cederroos to become the WBC mandatory challenger.
Crews-Dezurn won the WBC super middleweight title in a September 2013 majority decision over Marcela Cornejo. Their September 2019 rematch saw Crews-Dezurn win in more convincing fashion, which also came with the vacant WBO title at stake. She was originally due to face Mexico’s Alejandra Jimenez, who was injured and had to delay their fight by four months.
Jimenez initially claimed a split decision win in their rescheduled January 2020 clash, but the verdict was overturned after it was learned that she tested positive for the banned substance stanozolol. Crews-Dezurn to wait out a lengthy review process with both the WBO and WBC before having her title reign fully restored.
Two fights later, Crews-Dezurn became undisputed champion following a lopsided win over the previously unbeaten Cederroos (8-2, 4KOs), who lost her IBF and WBA titles in their undisputed championship clash on the April 30 Katie Taylor-Amanda Serrano undercard at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The bout was the last to date for
Green was ringside both in support of Brooklyn’s Serrano (44-2-1, 30KOs)—MVP’s first signed boxer—and to scout the super middleweight fight with every intention of facing the winner.
She is now poised to face both, after going through Cederroos to land the top spot. Green was emphatic in her one-sided blitzing of Cederroos on the undercard of Serrano’s historic ten-round win over Mexico’s Erika Cruz in their historic undisputed featherweight championship clash.
The win was the ninth straight inside the distance for Green, a former standout high school and college basketball player from Patterson, New Jersey who has since emerged as the top super middleweight contender in the world. The 33-year-old knockout artist has yet to go beyond the sixth-round as a pro, despite stepping up to scheduled ten-round fights early last year.
The ordered mandatory title fight isn’t quite in line with another fight that was in play but is still not finalized.
Boxing Scene has learned that talks were—and possibly still are—in place for Crews-Dezurn (8-1, 2KOs) to defend her fully unified championship versus England’s Savannah Marshall (12-1, 10KOs), a former WBO middleweight titlist. Crews-Dezurn was ringside for Marshall’s competitive but clear points loss to pound-for-pound queen Claressa Shields (13-0, 2KOs) in their undisputed middleweight championship last October 15 in London.
Much was made about the potential for Marshall—who rates alongside Green and undisputed junior lightweight champion Alycia Baumgarder as the hardest punching women in the sport today—to move up in weight to next challenge for the super middleweight crown. The two parties exchanged words that night and a few more in the aftermath, if only to add intrigue to such a bit if it were to materialize.
However, such a move would require either party—or both—to properly incentivize Green (12-0, 11KOs) to stand down and agree to face the winner. Boxing Scene has been made to understand that the unbeaten contender has every intention of proceeding with her first title fight as it has been instructed by the WBC.
Crews-Dezurn’s only career defeat came to Shields in a November 2016 four-round bout that marked the pro debut for both boxers. Shields entered as a highly decorated two-time Olympic Gold medalist and has since emerged as a three-division champion and already regarded by some as the best women’s fighter of all time. Crews-Dezurn is unbeaten in nine starts since that night, including the overturned verdict in the Jimenez fight.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox