As an ODU basketball player, she dreamed of a boxing career. Now a top contender, she’s eyeing a title bout.
On February 4, Shadasia Green announced her arrival to the boxing world at Madison Square Garden.
In the sixth round she knocked out former IBF and WBA super middleweight champion Elin Cederroos.
“She had two belts, one loss, never been stopped before,” Green said last week. “To know that I did that, and I won every round, and I performed on a high level, I’m proud of myself.”
The fight — the biggest of Green’s pro career — made her the WBC mandatory challenger for undisputed super middleweight champion Franchon Crews-Dezurn.
“Definitely was the biggest crowd I’ve fought in thus far. … I was a bit nervous but not as much as I used to be. I relied on my preparation. I knew I was ready. … It’s hot under the lights and it’s just you in there, I can’t pass the ball to anybody.”
Before she became “The Sweet Terminator,” Green was a standout guard for coach Wendy Larry and the Old Dominion women’s basketball team.
“Those days that I spent at Old Dominion, I appreciate them much more now than I did then,” Green said. “Being older and being out in the real world, there’s different responsibilities. In college, all you were responsible for was working hard, showing up for practice and being successful in the classroom. So I miss those days, I miss my teammates.”
The New Jersey native played for the Monarchs from 2010 to 2011 and was a mainstay in the starting lineup. She averaged just over eight points per game across her career and started in 74 of the 106 games in which she played.
Stats like that earned her an invitation to a WNBA camp, her mother Rechelle said. But even though she may have considered a pro basketball career at one point, it was always boxing for Green.
“It wasn’t a start [in boxing] after Old Dominion, it was a start before Old Dominion,” Larry said. “She had a passion for boxing in high school and I can recall going into Patterson [New Jersey] and having a discussion with her about how passionate she was about boxing.”
Green’s love for boxing started during her senior year of high school. At the time she was a highly recruited basketball prospect, with college letters “galore,” she said.
Green was searching for a way to stay in shape and work on her speed before heading off to college — the only problem was she hated running.
“I didn’t want to join a track team which was all about running,” Green said. “I said absolutely not … so I walked down to a boxing gym and I found boxing.”
When she found boxing, she found Barry Porter, her long-time coach. Both remember the first time they met fondly, and almost identically.
“I remember sitting at the desk and my feet up and my sunglasses on. … She probably thought I was asleep but I was watching every move she made,” Porter said. “I wasn’t saying anything to her. One day she came to me and she’s asking me for some help and we started working together and that’s pretty much just how it started.”
The gym and Green became almost inseparable after that. Rechelle Green recalled several times when she had to call and “shut down the gym” just to get Shadasia to come home.
“I can hear her say, ‘Just give me one more round;’ that one more round turned into five or six more rounds,” Porter said. “So I used to tell her, ‘Look, I’m gonna give you one more round and then I’m gonna turn these lights up and I’m going home.’ That turned into another three or four rounds, it’s like she never wanted to leave.”
When Shadasia heard that women were set to be able to box at the Olympic Games, she wanted to put basketball on the back burner and focus on boxing.
“She thought that she was gonna go to the Olympics,” Rechelle Green said. “And [I told her], ‘No, you’re gonna get an education. You’re gonna get a degree and after you do that you can do anything you want. Because then I know that whether I’m here on earth or not you will be able to support yourself because you have a degree in something you can find a job in and be OK.”
Green trained harder and harder and started staying at the gym longer and longer — but she had committed to Larry and Old Dominion, something her mother wanted her to honor.
“I don’t have scholarships for you. You can go home, go to school and when you finish school you can come back and we’ll pick it up where we left off,” Porter recalled telling Green. “That’s what she did.”
Green and her mother essentially struck a deal: Shadasia would go to college, play basketball and get her degree. And once her degree was in her mother’s hands, she could “have her life back,” as Shadasia put it.
Although she wasn’t boxing as much as she was in high school, Green was able to box some while at ODU. Larry advised against it, simply out of caution for her — who she now calls “one of the greats”
“I was afraid that during her career at Old Dominion that if she continued to box, she could injure herself,” Larry said. “We came to a pretty good agreement that she would continue to box but not competitively or not in a ring, but train.”
After her four years at ODU were up, she returned home to New Jersey and gave the degree to her mother, just like she promised.
“When I got back from college and I graduated, I handed my mother my degree and she handed me my life back and I started boxing,” Green said. “I made the USA team and it took off from there.”
Rechelle Green said she wasn’t initially sold on her daughter fully taking on boxing, but after she made Team USA, her mind changed.
“I’m like, ‘Wow, maybe I need to look into this because it’s something that she’s so heartful about and she’s actually doing everything that she said she was gonna do,” Rechelle Green said.
Green’s first pro fight was in 2019, and since then she’s gone 12-0 and is a WBC Silver Champion, International Super Middleweight Champion and AIBA Silver World medalist.
Her success isn’t shocking, though, to those around her, especially Larry, who saw her potential as an athlete early.
“She was a competitive athlete, just somebody that wanted to win and work to win,” Larry said. “She was an elite athlete. She was naturally very, very strong.”
Porter has high praise for Green — who now sits at No. 2 in ESPN’s most recent rankings of her division — and her skillset.
“She moves gracefully, like Ali or Sugar Ray. That’s how graceful she is,” Porter said. “There’s a lot of things that the world hasn’t seen her do yet. There’s so much more to her in boxing and she’s talented, very talented.”
Green signed with former Youtuber turned boxer Jake Paul’s promotional group, Most Valuable Promotions in January.
She’s already back and training and looks forward to locking down another fight in the next few months.
“I’m one of the best female fighters on the planet. I’m just getting recognition. I’m just getting the platform, my career looks bright,” Green said. “If I stay focused and on the right track and do what I’m supposed to do, I’ll be a super middleweight undisputed world champion before the next year.”
