It shouldn’t be a surprise that, when given an opportunity, O’Shaquie Foster went for the counterpunch.
The target: junior lightweight titleholder Lamont Roach Jr.
Roach, who holds the WBA belt at 130 pounds, had been asked about the former WBC titleholder last week in an interview with Naji Grampus of Cigar Talk. He said that Foster could come next after Roach’s bout with lightweight titleholder Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
“After I win, he can come up to ’35 and I’ll smoke him. I will smoke him. On my mother, I’m smoking him,” Roach said. “I’m really one of them. No funny. No disrespect to nobody I ever been in the ring with. Ask them. For real. Or pull up. Come to camp or something. Show me that I’m not.”
Grampus interviewed Foster this week and, of course, asked him about Roach’s comments.
“This dude is tweaking. Bozo,” Foster said. “It’s crazy because I’ve seen him say, ‘I’m one of them guys.’ We never shared the ring, because if we shared the ring, he wouldn’t be talking like that. I promise you, if it was amateurs, sparring, wherever, any time I would’ve met him in the ring, he wouldn’t have been talking like that, because anybody that’s been in the ring with me, you don’t hear them talk like that at all.”
Roach (25-1-1, 10 KOs) will challenge Davis on Dec. 14 in Houston.
“He talking so much. He better handle his business in December,” Foster said. “There’s gonna be a lot of backlash. You doing all that big talk. Don’t go up there and shit the bed, wet the bed.
“He do everything good, nothing great. For me. He’s average,” Foster added. “See the thing is why I don’t really respect all that talking: You ain’t fought nobody. You defended your title against some … come on, man. We know. We stacking up resumes against him or anybody else that’s champions, it’s no comparison.”
Roach’s lone loss came against Jamel Herring via unanimous decision in a 2019 title fight. He went on to win a world title in November 2023, topping Hector Garcia by split decision, and then defended the belt in June with an eighth-round technical knockout of Feargal McCrory.
“I respect Garcia. he was a champion. I don’t ever disrespect no champion,” Foster said. “He was coming off that loss with Tank. Literally been like almost a year, right? [It was about 10 and a half months.] Split decision, right? And it woulda went to Hector if he [Roach] didn’t get that knockdown in the last round. And then he came out talking all rough after that, and it’s like, ‘Bro, you gotta prove yourself still.’”
Foster (22-3, 12 KOs) has his own business to take care of. The 31-year-old Texan won the vacant WBC world title in February 2023 with a unanimous decision over Rey Vargas, defended it with a sensational final-seconds knockout of Eduardo “Rocky” Hernandez in October 2023, beat Abraham Nova via split decision in April, and then controversially lost it to Robson Conceicao in July.
Most observers feel that the Conceicao result was a robbery. Foster is getting an immediate rematch: Conceicao-Foster II is scheduled for Nov. 2 at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York. The fight will air on ESPN+.
David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2 and @UnitedBoxingPod. He is the co-host of the United Boxing Podcast. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.
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