Shakur Stevenson says he’s waiting for an interesting fight to come his way so he can come out of retirement. His recent performance against Edwin De Los Santos may have wrecked his chances of getting any of the notable names at 135 and 140 to fight him.
MarketabilityÂ
Stevenson fought so defensively against De Los Santos that he could be avoided for the remainder of his career. Unfortunately, Shakur doesn’t have the popularity needed to lure the top names to fight him, and that will not change if he continues to be ignored.
Until he becomes more exciting and stationary, he’s not going to become popular enough to get the fights that he wants and needs to take his career to the next level. Stevenson can leave Top Rank, but it won’t change anything. He’ll become PBC or Matchroom’s problem, and he’ll continue to be avoided by the top fighters.
The unbeaten WBC lightweight champion Shakur (21-0, 10 KOs) believes that Emanuel Navarrete or Vasily Lomachenko will come looking for him to fight in a unification match once they capture titles at 135.
Apart from that, Stevenson says he’d like to face Ryan Garcia or any interesting fighter interested in fighting him for his WBC belt. Shakur admits that he’s surprised these fighters don’t want to fight for his WBA title because it’s one of the belts viewed as valuable.
Shakur Waiting for Worthy Opponent
“I’m waiting for the opportunity for me to come out of retirement,” said Shakur Stevenson to Fighthype. “I got a WBC belt. So all roads to undisputed, being at 135, it come through me.
“We can already see them unifying, Lomachenko and a Navarrete fight. They can’t become the undisputed champion without coming to get the WBC strap off of me.
“They can do whatever they want, but I’m still going to be right here waiting on everybody. My opportunity got to come. There’s no way of becoming undisputed at 135 without one of those dudes coming to see me.
“It has a lot to do with the fighters don’t want to fight me,” said Shakur explaining his rationale behind his retirement. “You don’t hear anybody saying they want to negotiate and become WBC champion, and I think that’s a weird thing. You don’t hear nobody wanting to step up and fight for that WBC strap.
Openness to Ryan Garcia
“Fight me,” said Shakur about his interest in facing Ryan Garcia. “You’ll get plenty of notoriety for being a boxer. If you’re not going to fight him [Devin Haney], and you’re going to fight someone we’ve never heard of, go on and be an Instagram model,” said Shakur about Ryan.
Shakur needs to give up on his pipe dream of fighting Ryan Garcia because that’s NOT going to happen. He’s not popular enough to lure Ryan into fighting him, and that guy isn’t going to want to chase him around the ring like De Los Santos did.
Stevenson, 26, can’t afford to wait because he’ll be stripped of his title if he sits for years, thinking that he’ll eventually get one of the top names to face him.
