Shakur Stevenson Wants Oscar Valdez as he moves up in weight!
With everything indicating that IBF world featherweight champion Josh “The Leeds Warrior” Warrington (30-, 7 KO’s) will lock horns with regular WBA champion Xu “Monster” Can (18-2, 3 KO’s), WBO featherweight champion “Fearless” Shakur Stevenson (13-0, 7 KO’s) is preparing to make his exodus to the junior lighgtweight division.
The jump up in weight should come as a little surprise to anyone keeping up with the situation. Fearless has made no mystery of his desire to exit the division if he could not secure a showdown with the Leeds Warrior. Now that Team Warrington is openly talking about penning a fight with Xu, Stevenson feels like now is the time to make his move.
GUNNING FOR OSCAR VALDEZ
Being the focused fighter that he is, the WBO champ realizes that he has a number of exciting potential prizefights to make in the division. Although, despite his wide selection of options, he already kind of has his mind steering toward former WBO featherweight champ Oscar Valdez (27-0, 21 KO’s).
Prior to Valdez vacating his title and moving up, Stevenson had been named as his mandatory challenger. Now it would appear that these two are right back on a collision course with one another.
“Yea, I fight at 130 my next fight. I was staying to fight Warrington depending on how long the wait is, but it seems like what he want, he talking about fighting with Xu Can.
“Like they already got a deal set up. So if that’s what he want to do, then I’ll just jump up to 130 because I don’t really got a choice.
“…yeah we definitely got to scrap, I feel like we got unfinished business. I got [Oscar Valdez’] his [former] title. I know he got to feel some type of way about it now that I am at the weight class so it’s like ‘what you want to do?’
“It’s all up to him, but he don’t got no belt so that would just be like a fight warming me up for the champions at 130. But he don’t got no belt but I am still willing to fight him early and I think it would be a big fight for the fans anyway.”
This match-up would have been great at featherweight, let alone junior lightweight! Let’s just sit back and see how this unravels and who Stevenson can secure a prizefight with next.
By: Bakari Simpson
