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It has been reported that the match between Shakur Stevenson and Emanuel Navarrete, scheduled for September 23, has been called off.
As per a tweet from talkSPORT's Michael Benson, the negotiations for the match were at an advanced stage. Unfortunately, the fight fell through in the final stages before any signing could happen.
It is now claimed that Navarette will fight Eduardo Baez on August 20.
Navarrete, also known as 'El Vaquero', fights in the super bantamweight and featherweight divisions. The native of San Juan Zitlaltepec, Mexico has a record of 35-1, with an astounding 29 knockouts to his name. He is a two-weight world champion, holding the WBO Featherweight Title since 2020 and the WBO Junior Featherweight Title from 2018 to 2020. He has been ranked by The Ring as the world's best active featherweight as of 2021.
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A few of his former opponents include Joet Gonzalez, Christopher Diaz, Ruben Villa, Uriel Lopez, Jeo Santisima, Francisco Horta, and Juan Miguel Elorde. His only loss was from early in his career to Daniel Argueta.
Eduardo Baez, nicknamed 'El Gemelo', is also a Mexican fighter born in Baja California. He has a record of 21-2-2 with seven knockouts to his credit. A few of his former opponents include Jose Enrique Durantes Vivas, Arcadio Salazar, Abimael Ortiz and Narek Abgaryan. His only two losses came at the hands of Ra'eese Aleem and Mauricio Lara.
See Michael Benson's tweet here:
Who's next for Shakur Stevenson if not Emanuel Navarrete?
Now that the match between Emanuel Navarrete and Shakur Stevenson has been officially canceled and the Mexican has a potential new opponent, who will Stevenson face?
The WBO and WBC Junior Lightweight Champion's recent win over Oscar Valdez put him in the spotlight to call out some big names and continue his journey of unifying the belts. The 18-0 Newark, New Jersey native has many options to choose from. Some of those names include Kenichi Ogawa, Roger Gutierrez, and Vasiliy Lomachenko.
A bout with either Ogawa or Gutierrez would be helpful in unifying more junior lightweight titles, but there's little demand for those matches right now. Lomachenko and Stevenson would be an exciting fight as they both put on shows and are big names in boxing.
However, another name has cropped up as a possible matchup.
After the falling through of fight plans with Emanuel Navarrete, Shakur Stevenson has been respectfully called out on Twitter by Joe Cordina, who offered to fight him. Stevenson replied:
"Oh sh*t let's do it."
Perhaps negotiations will work out better between Shakur Stevenson and Joe Cordina than they did with Emanuel Navarrete.
See Shakur Stevenson's tweet here:
