Navarrete vs. Conceicao being negotiated for Stevenson vs. De Los Santos card on Nov.16th

Image: Navarrete vs. Conceicao being negotiated for Stevenson vs. De Los Santos card on Nov.16th
By Boxing News - 09/15/2023 - Comments

By Brian Webber: Emanuel Navarrete & 2016 Olympic gold medalist Robson Conceicao are in talks to fight on the undercard of the Shakur Stevenson vs. Edwin De Los Santos card on November 16th in Las Vegas.

Salvador Martinez of ESPN Knockout reports the news of the fight between WBO super featherweight champion Navarrete (38-1, 31 KOs) and the Brazilian Conceicao (17-2, 8 KO) being in talks.

Boxing fans would prefer to see Top Rank take some chances with Navarrete by throwing him in with Shakur or Robeisy Ramirez. It’s not quite as interesting that Navarrete would be fighting Conceicao, who is getting up there at age 34 and has losses to Oscar Valdez and Shakur.

Navarrete is coming off his career-best win over Oscar Valdez last August, winning a one-sided twelve round unanimous decision. That was a dominating performance by Navarrete, using his long reach and high work rate to dominate Valdez.

It’s unclear if the Navarrete-Conceicao fight, if it gets made, is placed in the co-feature spot on the Stevenson-De Los Santos card by Top Rank because promoter Bob Arum stays heavyweight Jared Anderson will be fighting on the card, and he’s been headlining lately.

It’s difficult to know whether Arum will bury Anderson on the card because he’s trying to turn him into a star, and he doesn’t have a lot of time to do that because the 23-year-old plans on retiring by his 27th birthday.

Conceicao will be turning 35 next month in October and is coming off a second round no contest against Nicolas Polanco last June. In that fight, Polanco collapsed to the canvas after a clash of heads in round two and staggered around the ring after he got back up. In between rounds, the fight was halted.

Last year in September, Conceicao lost a one-sided twelve-round unanimous decision against Shakur in September 2022. Shakur had missed weight and lost his WBO 130-lb title.

Fighting Conceicao would have made sense for Navarrete before he was beaten by Valdez & Stevenson, but not now. Top Rank can do better than this for Navarrete. I mean, if this is the best that they can do for Navarrete, then you can understand it. However, there’s still a lot of time for them to find better opposition.

Navarrete is a good fighter, but Top Rank needs to match him against some fighters that could potentially beat him, like Robeisy, Shakur, Vasily Lomchenko, Raymond Muratalla, William Zepeda, or Frank Martin.

 

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