Eddie Hearn’s two-fight deal for Shakur Stevenson involves him fighting non-Matchroom fighter William Zepeda in his second fight in early 2025.
Shakur’s first fight of his two-fight deal with Matchroom is against Joe Cordina, a British fighter who isn’t popular in the U.S. and is coming off a knockout loss. That fight hurts Shakur’s marketability more than helps it.
Delivering the Zepeda Fight
The question is whether Hearn will deliver the Golden Boy-promoted Zepeda (31-0, 27 KOs) because he’ll need to work with promoter Oscar De La Hoya to make that happen.
De La Hoya has complained recently about WBC lightweight champion Shakur (22-0, 10 KOs) lacking “self-confidence” to fight entertainingly to make him a marketable fighter.
Despite not holding a title, Zepeda is a more popular fighter than Shakur, and he doesn’t need him. It’s the other way around. Zepeda is ranked #1 with all the sanctioning bodies at lightweight, and he would make more money fighting WBA ‘regular’ champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis.
Shakur left Top Rank because they couldn’t deliver him the big fights, but if Hearn can’t do that either, he could end up in the same boat.
“Shakur looks at that [Jaron Ennis’ rollout with Eddie Hearn] and says, ‘I want that kind of attention. I wasn’t getting that with Top Rank,’” said boxing expert Chris Algieri to the Probox TV YouTube channel about what swayed Shakur Stevenson to sign with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom.
Will History Repeat Itself?
Welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis has fought just once since signing with Hearn: against 36-year-old David Avanesyan. If Hearn can’t deliver the champions at 147 for Boots, his next fight could be against Karen Chukhadzhian. Whether Hearn can work his magic with Boots or Shakur is questionable because it’s not as easy as he thinks to deal with different promoters and networks.
Also, when you have too good fighters like Boots, other fighters and promoters don’t want to face him; in Shakur’s case, he’s a boring runner who isn’t a draw. There’s nothing to gain for fighters to face Shakur, especially when they could potentially lose a decision against a guy who hits and runs all night.
Shakur naively believes that fights will suddenly be delivered to him, which were never there before when he was with Top Rank. That might not be the case.
“Can he [Hearn] secure the fights that really matter? The fights Top Rank could not because that was Shakur’s main gripe,” said Algieri. “Can Eddie get him the big fights, or was Eddie just the guy who talked at the negotiating table to make everyone think they could get the big fights?”
Hearn’s Handling of Andrade’s Career
If Hearn can’t set up a fight with Zepeda for Shakur in early 2025, it’ll be interesting to see who he does get. It would look bad if it’s another British fighter that American fans aren’t familiar with. Hearn would match Shakur as he did with Demetrius Andrade when he was with Matchroom.
Instead of setting up fights with the killers at 154 to increase Andrade’s popularity, Hearn matched him against Luke Keeler, Maciel Sulecki, Liam Williams, and Jason Quigley. He then wondered why Andrade’s popularity didn’t increase.
“The two-fight deal that there is [for Shakur with Matchroom]. The second fight is with Zepeda, who is with Golden Boy,” said Algieri. “Eddie and Golden Boy, I don’t know how many fights they’ve made in recent years. But Golden Boy and Bob [Arum] and Bob and Oscar [De La Hoya] make fights.
“They can do some crossover fights. It’s probably easier to make that fight through there. But anytime you have fighters in opposite promotional situations, it’s hard to make these fights. Is Eddie the guy that can jump through the lines?” said Algieri.
Hearn can potentially set up a fight with Zepeda for Shakur if he offers the right deal, but it’s not a sure thing. If he tries to broker a deal for Shakur to fight Tank Davis next year, he will have problems. That’s not likely to happen without Shakur signing with PBC.
Crossing Lines
“To a degree, he is because now we’re talking about Turki Alalshikh, and it seems that Eddie has a very tight connection with Turki, and they’re having a lot of fights together. So, potentially, you can get that crossover appeal,” said Algieri.
Turki can definitely help Hearn get the fight with Zepeda, but probably not Tank Davis if PBC isn’t on board. I don’t know if Tank is excited about fighting with Shakur, especially if he looks bad against Zepeda and Cordina.
“They announced that Shakur is fighting Cordina a couple of days ago. Well, Cordina is with Eddie. So, it kind of makes sense that Shakur is now signing with Eddie. He has a two-fight deal. We’ll see what Eddie can actually deliver what’s promised,” said Algieri. “Let’s see what Eddie can deliver because, with Jaron Ennis, he certainly hasn’t yet.”
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