If Josh Warrington wants to fight Shakur Stevenson, he’ll have to agree to do it next.
Otherwise, Stevenson will vacate his WBO featherweight title and remain at junior lightweight for the foreseeable future. A showdown with Warrington is the only fight that could make Stevenson return to the 126-pound division after he faces Felix Caraballo in a 10-round, 130-pound, non-title fight Tuesday night in Las Vegas.
Warrington wants to box Stevenson, but the unbeaten Englishman is committed to another featherweight title unification against China’s Can Xu next. A date for the Warrington-Xu fight hasn’t been announced because Eddie Hearn, Warrington’s promoter, doesn’t want Warrington to fight again until crowds can attend sporting events in the United Kingdom.
“If he’s really fighting Can Xu,” Stevenson told BoxingScene.com, “y’all could definitely cross out me versus Warrington because I’m not gonna wait for no Can Xu-Warrington fight, which will probably happen in September. I’m not waiting that long.”
Stevenson doesn’t consider Warrington-Xu a legitimate title unification bout because Xu is the WBA’s secondary title-holder at 126 pounds. Leo Santa Cruz, who has moved up to 130 pounds, is the WBA’s “super” champion in the featherweight division.
Nevertheless, Stevenson understands why Warrington (30-0, 7 KOs), who owns the IBF belt, would want to box Xu (18-2, 3 KOs) instead of facing him.
“That’s the smarter route for them to take,” Stevenson said. “Fighting me wouldn’t have been too smart. I think that him and Can Xu can just stand there and punch each other’s brains loose and do that. But he know for a fact that Shakur would never have been the smartest fight to take it he wanted to keep his 0.”
Stevenson (13-0, 7 KOs), a 2016 Olympic silver medalist from Newark, New Jersey, is willing to fight Warrington in his hometown of Leeds, England. The financial offers Stevenson received from Frank Warren, Warrington’s former promoter, and later Hearn led him to believe, however, that Warrington wasn’t seriously interested in fighting him.
Stevenson said he was offered only slightly more money to fight Warrington in Leeds than he would’ve earned to make the first defense of his WBO featherweight against Colombia’s Miguel Marriaga (29-3, 25 KOs) on March 14 at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater in New York.
“I think that’s one of the reasons why they lowballed me,” Stevenson said. “I think they know what I’m capable of, what I’m built with. They knew we wasn’t gonna take that kind of money. They knew what it was, and they tried to make sure the fight didn’t happen. Now that they hear talks about me going up to 130, now you hear Warrington speak out a little bit more, saying, ‘I want Shakur.’ I heard him saying he wants to fight me next and all this stuff, but now it’s like you’re saying that when you hear talk of me going to 130. So, man, they’re weird. Them people are a little weird.”
The Stevenson-Marriaga card was canceled the night of March 12 once the coronavirus crisis intensified.
ESPN will televise Stevenson’s fight against Puerto Rico’s Caraballo (13-1-2, 9 KOs) as the main event of a six-bout card Tuesday night from MGM Grand’s Conference Center. The show is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.