Shakur Stevenson wants to go straight into a fight against his #1 WBC challenger, William Zepeda, when he returns to the ring from his surgically repaired injured hand in February or March 2025.
Promoter Eddie Hearn sounded iffy about whether WBC lightweight champion Shakur (22-0, 10 KOs) will go straight into a fight against Zepeda (31-0, 27 KOs) or take another fight before that. He says his plans are still the same for Shakur about wanting him to take one or two fights before facing Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis in a mega-fight in 2025.
Zepeda will fight Tevin Farmer in a Riyadh Season event on November 16th at The Venue in Saudi Arabia. It’s part of the Latino Night event. It’ll be a tune-up fight for Zepeda against a slick boxer who helps him prepare for the movement that Shakur will use when they fight next year.
“We’d still like to make that fight [Joe Cordina], but the WBC has ordered that fight with [William] Zepeda. He fights in November. So, it’s quite likely that he’ll [Shakur] will go straight into that fight,” said Eddie Hearn to Fight Hub TV about what Shakur Stevenson’s plans are for his next fight when he returns from his injured hand in 2025.
That’s a tough matchup for Shakur to go straight into a fight against Zepeda, coming off a hand injury and two poor performances against Artem Harutyunyan and Edwin De Los Santos. If things don’t go right for Shakur against Zepeda, Hearn will be dumped on by the boxing public for allowing Stevenson to take the Zepeda fight after coming off a hand injury.
“I believe so,” said Hearn when asked if Shakur’s hand injury resulted from sparring. “Shakur was looking forward to that fight and moving on to Zepeda. It’s an unfortunate injury, but now he’s had the operation. Shakur is 27-years-old, and a three-division world champion. It’s a small bump in the road.”
If Hearn does give Shakur a tune-up first, he needs to match him against someone who has a similar style as Zepeda to help him prepare. Cordina was useless for that purpose.
What Shakur needs is someone like Oscar Duarte or Edwin De Los Santos. Either of those guys would be ideal for Shakur to get ready for Zepeda. The downside of Shakur fighting a pressure fighter like Duarte or De Los Santos first is that he’ll likely run from them because he lacks the punching power and physical tools to fight in the pocket against strong fighters who hit hard.
“The plan is to get him back to full health and target that return for February or March 2025,” said Hearn. “The plan for me was after those two fights [Cordina and Zepeda] was to fight Gervonta Davis. That still remains the same, whether that’s one fight or two fights.”
Hearn sounds like he wants to gamble with Shakur by matching him against Zepeda first and hopes that he will come through that match to face Tank Davis after that. Unfortunately, there’s an excellent chance Shakur will lose to Zepeda by knockout.
“If you look at the big mega-fights for Gervonta Davis, it’s Shakur Stevenson,” said Hearn.
