Most of the modern fighters are avoiding saying the most popular or biggest name fighters in their division. Shakur Stevenson, who stopped Shuichiro Yoshino on Saturday, April 8th, in six rounds, as the referee Allen Huggins had seen enough and called the bout off.
After the fight, Stevenson didn’t bite his tongue. Stevenson made it clear he wants to fight Devin Haney, and he wants to fight him soon. In the ring, Stevenson called for Haney, in the media scrums Stevenson called for Haney - on any platform after the fight Shakur Stevenson used it as an opportunity to call out Devin Haney.
These thoughts outside the ring echo what he told a live audience on national television after the fight. Stevenson wants to fight Haney - and he is making his attention known far and wide. Haney holds all four world titles, the WBA, WBC, WBO, and IBF at he lightweight division. Haney will face generational great Vasiliy Lomachenko on May 20th, on ESPN pay-per-view, and if he wins his father, Bill Haney told Mark Kriegel via text message that Haney is willing to stay at lightweight setting up a potential showdown with Shakur Stevenson.
I have never seen Devin Haney really even hurt anybody before. He ain’t really got the punching power, so if he watched that he could tell that I could punch,” said Stevenson in a media scrum after the fight “I don’t know what would make him say, ‘Let’s do it.’ Maybe he’s just a competitor. Maybe I just got to respect that.”
As for Stevenson, he predicts that the bout will be a fight that isn’t competitive, and seems that the three-time world champion across the featherweight and super featherweight divisions is eyeballing a world title in his newest weight class, lightweight. To do so currently, Stevenson has to face Haney unless Haney were to vacate the title.
“Everyone will be like [expletive],” explained Stevenson. “You is who you say you is [SIC].”
