WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson was installed Tuesday as a co-feature fighter on the Oct. 12 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, card against Joe Cordina, announced Turki Alalshikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority.
Stevenson, 27, of Newark, N.J., will return to the ring three months after recording a unanimous-decision win over Artem Harutyunyan in his final Top Rank fight. The Stevenson-Cordina bout is expected to be a co-feature of the undisputed light-heavyweight championship between unbeaten Russians Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.
Stevenson was mandated by the WBC to face the dangerous William Zepeda, but this interim bout is being permitted and the Zepeda fight is being pushed to next year as Mexico’s Zepeda awaits the birth of a child, a boxing official familiar with the situation told BoxingScene Tuesday.
In the meantime, Stevenson (22-0, 10 KOs) will meet the former IBF super-featherweight titlist Cordina (17-1, 9 KOs) as part of seven undercard bouts announced Tuesday by Alalshikh.
“[Stevenson’s] talented and young and if he’s smart, we will do a lot of things with him,” Alalshikh told ESPN.com. “There’s a big fight with him in the future.”
In other undercard bouts, 34-year-old Chris Eubank Jr (33-3, 24 KOs) looks forward to a consecutive win when he faces Kamil Szeremeta (25-2-2, 8 KO) at middleweight while heavyweight Fabio Wardley (17-0-1, 16 KO) and Frazer Clarke (8-0-1, 6 KO) prepare for a rematch.
Jai Opetaia (25-0, 19 KO) will defend his IBF cruiserweight title against Jack Massey (22-2, 12 KO), Ben Whittaker (8-0, 5 KO) will go toe-to-toe against Liam Cameron (23-6, 10 KO), and Skye Nicolson (11-0, 1 KO) is scheduled to defend her WBC featherweight title against Raven Chapman (9-0, 2 KO).
Nicholson-Chapman is the first women’s title bout to be staged in Saudi Arabia since Alalshikh asserted such influence upon the sport.
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].
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