WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson and mandatory William Zepeda have to begin negotiations by the sanctioning body with a purse bid scheduled for May 6th if they can’t put together a deal.
Shakur, 27, hopes to use this fight to prepare for a unification match against Gervonta Davis. He could be making a mistake because Zepeda has the style that would slice through the light-hitting Shakur and beat him up badly.
Farmer’s Warning
Stevenson couldn’t do the stuff that Tevin Farmer was able to do against Zepeda in their two fights because he has no punching power and fragile hands. Farmer warned Shakur on social media that the pressure from Zepeda was hard to deal with.
“Trust me when I tell you. Even though (most) of the world thought I beat Zepeda twice, that output is going to give everybody big trouble unless you knock him out. I told you first,” said Tevin Farmer to Shakur on X.
Shakur replied with: “U wanna bet some money on this?”
It might be impossible for Farmer to talk some sense into Shakur’s head because his victories over the soft opposition he’s been fighting for the last five years has made him overconfident. Obviously, there’s a limit to Stevenson’s fake confidence, though, because we’ve already seen that he wants no part of fighting Andy Cruz, and Jadier Herrera.
When you see Shakur targeting Josh Padley, Joe Cordina, and Floyd Schofield instead of those two Cubans, it tells you that his confidence is the false variety.
The likely reason he’s interested in fighting Zepeda is that he knows he needs at least one solid win at lightweight for him to have a chance of getting the Tank Davis fight. Stevenson’s performance against Edwin De Los Santos was so poor that it’s not been useful for him to use to build positive pressure for a fight against Tank.
Shakur’s recent victories over Padley and Harutyunyan were useless to him as well because those two fighters were too poor to help him. To have a chance at getting the Gervonta fight, Shakur needs Zepeda. This is all about Tank.
Stevenson needs a victory over William Zepeda to help validate him in the eyes of the public, the networks, the promoters, and Tank. However, he’s not crazy enough to fight Andy Cruz or Jadier Herrera and be exposed. He knows he stands a better chance against Zepeda, but he may find out the hard way that he made a mistake.
Power Disparity
The things Farmer did against Zepeda, Stevenson can’t do because he doesn’t possess Tevin’s power, size, or toughness. Farmer is a much stronger fighter than Shakur, and his punch resistance is excellent. The shots that Farmer took from Zepeda in both fights would have laid out Shakur.
The punches that Farmer landed on Zepeda would have knocked out Shakur. You can argue that Farmer is a better fighter than Shakur, but he doesn’t get the credit because he’s not a braggart, doesn’t post 24/7 on X, and doesn’t have Eddie Hearn talking him up in interviews.
Last Updated on 04/07/2025
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