By Craig Daly: Shakur Stevenson (20-0, 10 KOs) made it clear after his sixth-round destruction of previously unbeaten Shuichiro Yoshino (16-1, 12 KOs) last Saturday night that he wants Devin Haney next and that he’ll “smoke him” with ease.
Undisputed lightweight champion Haney won’t have a choice in the matter soon once the WBC orders him to face Stevenson because he’s now mandatory after his 6th-round TKO win over Yoshino. After all, that was a title eliminator.
Shakur made it look easy last Saturday night, knocking Yoshino down in rounds two & four before the referee Allen Huggins pulled the plug at the 1:35 mark of round six at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
As far as Haney (29-0, 15 KOs) goes, he’s defending against Vasily Lomachenko (17-2, 11 KOs) next month on May 20th on ESPN+ PPV at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Haney has been vocal about wanting the Gervonta Davis vs. Ryan Garcia winner, and he’ll likely exhaust all his efforts in that direction.
There’s a lot more money to be made for the 24-year-old Haney fighting the Tank-Ryan winner than fighting Shakur, who has a style that blends Floyd Mayweather Jr and Guillermo Rigondeaux, making him difficult to hit.
Haney won’t want to risk fighting the pot-shotting defensive artist Shakur because the money won’t be as good as fighting the winner or loser of the Tank Davis vs. Ryan Garcia fight.
Those two will likely fight a rematch, so Haney will move up to 140 or take a beatable contender while he waits. One can imagine Haney choosing someone like Isaac Cruz or William Zepeda for his next fight while he waits to face Ryan or Tank.
Will Shakur Stevenson and Devin Haney fight?
“I wish he had let it keep going because if he let it keep going, I would have sat him down for real,” said Shakur to the media about him wishing that the referee Allen Huggins had allowed Yoshino to continue fighting in the sixth round rather than stopping it.
“I wanted to finish him and let him know that I can really punch. Tell him to come on,” said Stevenson about Devin Haney. “I never seen Haney really hurt anybody. He doesn’t have the punching power. If he watch that, he can tell that I can punch.
“He’s going to smoke Lomachenko, but he’s going to be drained coming back to fight me, and that’s going to be ugly.
I think it’s going to be easy work by smoking him and shocking everybody by making it an easy fight. Everybody will be like, ‘Damn, you is who you say you is,” said Stevenson.
