By Max Schramm: Newly crowned WBO super featherweight champion Shakur Stevenson believes he’s not going to be allowed by his Top Rank promoters to face WBC champion Oscar Valdez (30-0, 23 KOs) in a unification fight.
Shakur (17-0, 9 KOs) wants the fight with Valdez right away, but he’s upset that it’s not going to happen after hearing that Top Rank will match Oscar against WBO featherweight champion Emanuel Navarrete in his next fight.
If the match comes off, the 26-year-old Navarrete (35-1, 29 KOs) would be moving up from 126 to challenge the unbeaten Valdez for his WBC 130-lb belt.
From Top Rank’s perspective, they likely don’t see much value in letting Stevenson fight Valdez right now.
TOO SOON FOR VALDEZ VS. STEVENSON
If you look at it logically, it would be not very intelligent for Top Rank to allow a fighter like the 24-year-old Stevenson, who isn’t widely known yet with the casual boxing fans, to face Valdez.
Stevenson still has a long way to go before he becomes popular enough for Top Rank to match him against guys like Valdez.
Moreover, Stevenson’s fighting style has been quite dull most of his career until his last fight when he fought the weak puncher Jamel ‘Semper Fi’ Herring.
Stevenson defeated Herring to win the WBO super featherweight title last Saturday night at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta.
In one of Shakur’s rare fights in which he showed aggression, he went after the 35-year-old Herring and scored a tenth round knockout. If Herring were a puncher, we’d likely have seen Shakur fighting with his standard safety-first style.
Now we been calling out Valdez for how long now?!?? Now I see Top Rank and reporters wit a voice talking about Valdez vs Navarrate 😂😂 so now after the taking the belt from the champ and the best performance of my career we talking Valdez fighting a 26 pounder cmon now
— Shakur Stevenson (@ShakurStevenson) October 26, 2021
Shakur is in too much of a hurry to fight Oscar Valdez, and he needs to sit back and understand why Top Rank isn’t making this fight. The Valdez fight needs to marinate before Top Rank puts Stevenson in there with their famous WBC champion.
Top Rank knows what they’re doing
Stevenson needs to agree to let Top Rank match him against Vasily Lomachenko next and see if he can beat him. A win over Lomachenko (15-2, 11 KOs) will help build Shakur’s marketability with the casual boxing fans so that one day, he’ll be popular enough to fight Valdez.
SHAKUR SOUNDING BITTER
“It’s still politics. Oscar Valdez. I mean, I used to sit back and complain, and I still sit back and complain, but you got to realize that ain’t going to do too much,” said Shakur Stevenson about him not getting a fight with Oscar Valdez.
“They’re in control, they’re in the power, but I will tell the world that they love Oscar Valdez, and they don’t want me to be in the ring with Oscar Valdez because they know what’s going to happen.
“Oscar Valdez don’t want it either. So he can sit there after the fight and say, ‘Oh, I want to fight Shakur Stevenson,’ but when I reach out, there ain’t not talks of me and him fighting, there ain’t nothing.
“He’s going to say at the interview, but he ain’t really jumping in towards it. He ain’t going with that,” said Stevenson about Oscar Valdez not readily agreeing to fight him.
“There’s only one fight left, and it’s the biggest fight in the division,” said Shakur. “Oscar can’t keep ducking; it’s time to fight. Me vs. Oscar Valdez, there’s nothing else to look forward to. The 130-pound division, we need to unify, let’s get it,” said Stevenson.