{"id":485129,"date":"2026-02-19T11:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T11:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/485129\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T11:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T11:03:07","slug":"boxing-from-olympic-trials-to-8m-deal-claressa-shields-full-circle-moment-in-franchon-crews-dezurn-fight-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/485129\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing: From Olympic trials to $8m deal – Claressa Shields’ full-circle moment in Franchon Crews-Dezurn fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six months before the 2012 Olympics, American Claressa Shields took her first step on the path to greatness.<\/p>\n

Aged only 16, Shields beat national champion Franchon Crews-Dezurn, who was eight years her senior, at the US Olympic trials.<\/p>\n

Shields would go on to win gold at the Games in London and earn a further two victories over Crews-Dezurn in the amateur ranks.<\/p>\n

A fourth successive win followed when they met on their professional debuts in 2016 – and the pair are set to reignite their rivalry on Saturday when Shields defends her undisputed heavyweight status.<\/p>\n

“Me and Franchon have always said that for some reason we are always intertwined in each other’s lives,” Shields told BBC Sport. <\/p>\n

“If you take it back to when I was 16, she was ranked number one in the country and I was ranked number seven and the people who were ranked lower had to pull out a ball and it would tell you who we were fighting against – I pulled out number one.<\/p>\n

“Now we meet again on the first fight of my major deal.”<\/p>\n

The major multi-fight deal<\/a> that Shields speaks of was signed with Wynn Records and Salita Promotions in November. <\/p>\n

It is worth a staggering $8m (\u00a36.1m) and also came with an additional $3m (\u00a32.2m) signing-on bonus.<\/p>\n

Those figures are unheard of in women’s boxing but Shields, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, five-weight world champion and three-weight undisputed champion<\/a>, is no stranger to raising the bar.<\/p>\n

“I have never heard of a man getting that kind of signing bonus. I’ve heard of men getting a $1m (\u00a3739,000) signing bonus but never $3m,” Shields said.<\/p>\n

“I would love to ask ChatGPT, ‘Has a man ever got a $3m signing bonus for a boxing contract?’ <\/p>\n

“My contract now is big overall and I’m getting back paid. When I came out of the Olympics with two gold medals, I should have got a $1m signing bonus for whoever I went with but that didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

“Now it’s years later but I’m getting it all back. I’ve been able to make millions over the past few years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six months before the 2012 Olympics, American Claressa Shields took her first step on the path to greatness.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-485129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}