Shakur Stevenson says he’d like to fight Emanuel Navarrete at a catchweight after he captures the soon-to-be-vacant WBC lightweight title.
Shakur would have a field day with Navarrete’s slow punches and his bad habit of throwing long telegraphed shots, which leaves him wide open to being countered.
Navarrete got away with his poor mechanics & slow speed against Valdez, but only because he was roughly four divisions large than him in weight & size.
For all intents and purposes, the former featherweight champion Oscar Valdez fought a welterweight last night in his headliner against the 28-year-old Navarrete.
It’s unclear how long it will take for Shakur to fight for the WBC 135-lb title, but it’s likely at some point in the fall against potentially Vasily Lomachenko or the bravest contender in the World Boxing Council’s top 15 ranking at lightweight.
Navarrete said, “I’m not scared” of Shakur (20-0, 10 KOs) when asked by the media if he’d be interested in fighting him next after his win over his much smaller opponent Oscar Valdez (31-2, 23 KOs) last Saturday night at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona.
Some boxing fans believe the only reason Navarrete (38-1, 31 KOs) said he was willing to fight Shakur is because he’s fighting at lightweight now, and there’s not much chance of them running into each other.
Navarrete was smothered with compliments from boxing fans on social media and by the ESPN commentator for his one-sided twelve round unanimous decision win over Valdez. The scores were 116-112, 118-110, and 119-109.
Yeah I wouldn’t mind it at all tbh.. Just gotta get this belt at 135 first and we can square up at a catch weight if he wit it https://t.co/zaYoEO4TU3
— Shakur Stevenson (@ShakurStevenson) August 13, 2023
Navarrete is a good fighter but too slow of hand to beat a sharpshooter like Shakur. We’ll have to see what Bob Arum of Top Rank wants to do becausee he might not be on board with feeding Navarrete to Shakur and watching ‘The Cowboy’ get embarrassed.
From a business standpoint, Arum & Top Rank should keep Navarrete far away from Stevenson and continue to match him against fighters that he can 100% beat. Shakur is all wrong for Navarrete, and so is O’Shaquie Foster.
Arum is probably going to set up a rematch between Navarrete and Valdez, even though their fight was one-sided. Boxing fans will want to see it again, but not the more astute ones, who actually had their eyes open and saw what a mismatch it was.
It would be better if Arum didn’t get stuck on the rerun cycle by putting Navarrete back in with Valdez just for money purposes. There’s a lot better fights out there fo Navarrete against these fighters:
- Robeisy Ramirez
- Frank Martin
- Vasily Lomachenko
- Raymond Muratalla
- Isaac Cruz
- William Zepeda
- Subriel Matias
- Devin Haney
