During an interview this week, Ryan Garcia roasted Shakur Stevenson, responding to his complaints about none of the top fighters wanting to face him.
Defense-Only Doesn’t Cut It
Shakur (22-0, 10 KOs) is making a case for being so good that popular guys avoid him for fear of getting beat. Ryan (24-1, 20 KOs) has a different take. He says that Shakur brings “no money to the table” and is not a great fighter because all he does is “defense.”
Ryan feels that Shakur needs both offense and defense to be a “great fighter. ” He only focuses on defense with him, and he still wins, but barely, as we saw in his fight against Edwin De Los Santos.
Don’t tell promoter Eddie Hearn because he signed Shakur recently and is reportedly paying him $5 million for his fight against Joe Cordina on October 12th. He thinks Shakur will be a “global superstar” soon, and he doesn’t understand why he already isn’t a star in the U.S.
Stevenson didn’t land anything in that fight, but the judges gave him a questionable win last November. If De Los Santos had been more popular, he would have won because he had landed the better shots, and Shakur wasn’t trying to fight.
It was revealed today that Shakur vs. Joe Cordina fight plus undercard is priced at $14.99 on PPV next month on October 12th at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The main event fight between light heavyweight champions Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol will be shown for free on ESPN+, which is a very strange situation because that’s the only fight the fans are interested in seeing on the card in large numbers.
“Everybody wants to see you, but you don’t bring no money to the table. So why would anybody want to see you?” said Ryan Garcia to the Say Cheese YouTube channel, reacting to being told that Shakur Stevenson said nobody wants to fight him.
“You’re not like that, bro. We watch all of your fights, and you run, and you run, and you run. You almost lost to Edwin De Los Santos [last November] and didn’t even throw one punch. Tim Bradley is [glazing] you every chance he can get. You are a bum, bro.”
A Question of Entertainment
Shakur definitely doesn’t meet the criteria for what U.S. fans consider entertainment and doesn’t seem to fit in with this era’s fans, who expect more from their fighters. In the past, fans were more accepting of defensive artists before the creation of the Internet, but now they have higher standards, and Shakur doesn’t meet them.
“You’re Shakur Twitterson. You’re nothing. You’re just a guy that’s boxing. He’s not that good, bro,” Ryan continued about Shakur. “He’s good, but he’s not great. Great can do offense and defense. You can’t just do defense.
“Mayweather didn’t just do defense. He did offense and defense. You [Shakur] only do defense, and somehow you still win. I don’t get it,” said Ryan.
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