LAS VEGAS – Franchon Crews-Dezurn is seeking a path for a rematch with women’s heavyweight titleholder Claressa Shields, the manager of the WBC women’s super middleweight titleholder told BoxingScene on Friday.
Crews-Dezurn, who dropped a four-round unanimous decision to Shields in their joint 2016 four-round professional debuts, is currently in talks to first meet former WBC heavyweight titleholder Hanna Gabriels, 22-2-1 (13 KOs), of Costa Rica.
“They would fight, and then the winner would fight Claressa Shields at heavyweight,” Crews-Dezurn manager Peter Kahn said of talks with promoter Dmitry Salita.
Shields, 15-0 (3 KOs), is scheduled to fight Danielle Perkins for the WBC, WBO and IBF heavyweight titles February 2 in her hometown of Flint. Michigan, after becoming a heavyweight belt holder with a July 27 second-round TKO of Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.
While the WBA has ordered Crews-Dezurn, 9-2 (2 KOs), to fight its top-ranked super middleweight Raquel Miller, the road to Shields is seen as the more consequential choice, Kahn said.
“Everybody is on board with what we’re trying to do,” Kahn said. “Dmitry has made offers. Everybody’s trying.”
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
