O’Shaquie Foster wants a 130-pound title unification fight after he defends his WBC super featherweight title against Abraham Nova on Friday night.
Foster: Lamont Roach More Makeable Fight Than Joe Cordina; Not Babysitting Belt Like Cordina
O’Shaquie Foster wants a 130-pound title unification fight after he defends his WBC super featherweight title against Abraham Nova on Friday night.
Emanuel Navarrete would’ve been his preferred opponent and easier to secure because Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc. promotes Foster and Navarrete. Mexico’s Navarrete still owns the WBO junior lightweight title, but he has committed to moving up to the lightweight division to fight Ukraine’s Denys Berinchyk next for the vacant WBO 135-pound championship.
Foster therefore would welcome championship unification clashes with IBF champ Joe Cordina or WBA champ Lamont Roach, though he thinks Roach would be more willing to fight him than Cordina.
Foster’s last fight – a memorable 12th-round stoppage of Mexican contender Rocky Hernandez on October 28 in Cancun – was streamed by DAZN, the same platform that has showcased Cordina’s three IBF 130-pound championship matches since June 2022. Foster feels Cordina and his promoter, Eddie Hearn, disingenuously discussed a possible bout with him and didn’t actually want it.
The 30-year-old Foster later signed a multi-fight agreement with Top Rank, which has an exclusive output deal with ESPN. Foster (21-2, 12 KOs), of Orange, Texas, and Nova (23-1, 16 KOs), of Albany, New York, will headline a three-bout broadcast by ESPN on Friday night from The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Roach (24-1-1, 9 KOs), of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, is a promotional free agent, which would afford him more flexibility to fight Foster on ESPN. Cordina (17-0, 9 KOs), of Cardiff, Wales, also would need to beat Belfast’s Anthony Cacace (21-1, 7 KOs) in his next title defense, scheduled for May 18 at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to remain in position to fight fellow 130-pound champions.
“Lamont Roach is the more makeable fight than Cordina,” Foster told BoxingScene.com. “Cordina, he wanna be more of a diva. They had plenty of chances to make their pitch to me for the fight. And then they go to the Internet and say, ‘Oh, he priced himself out.’ We never even negotiated a fight with them guys. Like, we never even talked numbers or nothing like that. So, I don’t know what types of games they be playing and I honestly don’t trust ‘em.
“You know, so if it come across my table, a actual offer or we send them an offer, and it’s real, I’m wit’ it. I’ll fight him next. I definitely got something for him, for sure. But I feel Roach is more of a real fighter. He not tryin’ to babysit the belt. That’s what Cordina doin’ to me. I feel like him and Eddie Hearn and them, they tryin’ to babysit it and get as much [money] before he lose. … But I’m ready for any one of them that can be next.”
ESPN’s tripleheader is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. ET on Friday night with a 10-round featherweight fight in which Brooklyn-bred prospect Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (10-0, 6 KOs) will square off against Norway-based Filipino southpaw Bernard Torres (18-1, 8 KOs). Las Vegas’ Andres Cortes (20-0, 11 KOs) is scheduled to oppose Puerto Rico’s Bryan Chevalier (20-1-1, 16 KOs) in the co-feature, a 10-round junior lightweight fight.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
