Shakur Stevenson envisions fight with Gervonta Davis in near future

Stevenson says he’s confident that a fight with Gervonta “Tank” Davis will happen in the near future.

The 27-year-old Stevenson, of Newark, New Jersey, revealed that his team held discussions with Baltimore’s Davis, 30, but failed to seal a deal for a WBC and WBA lightweight unification championship.

Despite the holdup, WBC titleholder Stevenson, 22-0 (10 KOs), believes it’s just a matter of time before he will face Davis, 30-0 (28 KOs), in a fight that is expected to be as big as it gets at 135.

“I already know that, at the end of the day, that fight is gonna happen,” Stevenson told IFL TV. “Fans just gotta wait until whatever Tank says the fight is gonna happen. So, I respect who we are. Just gotta sit there and wait until he says, ‘Let’s fight.’”

Davis is scheduled to face Lamont Roach Jnr on December 12 at the Toyota Center in Houston, but the bout is likely to be postponed to a later date. Davis has had just a single fight this year, stopping Frank Martin in eight rounds in June.

Should the bout with Roach fall through, Davis could opt for a mega-fight with Stevenson next year. According to Stevenson, he would be up for the challenge.

“I can’t give up my recipe. I can’t give up my game plan. People just gotta tune in and watch,” Stevenson said about how a fight with Davis would play out.

In the meantime, Stevenson is chasing a showdown with William Zepeda following the cancellation of the latter’s scheduled bout with Joe Cordina. Stevenson has recovered from a hand injury that prevented the fight from happening.

Ahead of a possible slugfest, Zepeda promoter Oscar De La Hoya has reiterated his fighter’s readiness to end Stevenson’s invincibility in the ring – a comment Stevenson laughed off.

“I mean, [Oscar De La Hoya is] just saying what he’s supposed to say, but he’s been very hesitant. I think that over the last years, we have not seen a champion gotta call out a mandatory challenger. Why am I the champion? I gotta ask the mandatory challenger, ‘Let’s fight,’ and I am screaming everywhere I go.

“And it’s like, if you’re the mandatory challenger, you should be the one that’s saying, ‘Let’s fight’ to me. Why would you fight anybody else when I’m the guy that you’re supposed to be wanting to fight?”

Bernard Neequaye is a sports journalist with a specialty in boxing coverage. He wrote a boxing column titled “From The Ringside” in his native Ghana for years. He can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) at @BernardNeequaye, LinkedIn at Bernard Neequaye and through email at [email protected].