Shakur Stevenson is already predicting victory over Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis for a hoped-for unification fight in 2025. Although there are no guarantees that a match with WBA lightweight champion Tank Davis (30-0, 28 KOs) will happen next year, WBC champ Shakur (22-0, 10 KOs) believes it will, and he has no doubts that he’ll be victorious.
Stevenson still needs to defeat his #1 challenger, William Zepeda, on February 22nd, and that’s a fight he could lose or look bad in winning.
Shakur Guarantees Victory
If Shakur puts in another performance as he did in his last two matches against Artem Hartutyunyan and Edwin De Los Santos, his chances of getting a fight against Tank will go down the drain. Tank won’t want to be involved in a fight against an opponent who refuses to engage and who will be on the run for 12 rounds.
Before a unification fight between those two can potentially happen, Shakur must lose a lot of weight before his title defense against Zepeda (31-0, 27 KOs) on February 22nd. Shakur looks like a little butterball, having ballooned up in size from good eating since his last fight on July 6th. That weight is going to have to come off before he can fight Zepeda.
If Shakur makes his training camp a fat farm for the Zepeda fight, his chances of winning will plummet because this is not the type of light hitter that he’d been fighting in most of his fights in the pro ranks.
“Next year will be perfect. The fight has got to happen,” said Shakur Stevenson to Boxing News when asked about his interest in fighting Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis in 2025. “There’s no way the fight don’t happen. The best vs. the best. I can’t wait for it.”
Next year would be perfect if Shakur beats Zepeda and looks good doing it. But the chances of both things happening are slim because he’s uncomfortable taking power shots from lightweights. Shakur stood in the pocket against Artem Harutyunyan last July, but only because he was lined up with a weak puncher in his farewell fight with Top Rank.
Some fans believe Top Rank made this move to try to stay on Shakur’s good side so he could extend his contract with them. If that was the idea, it didn’t work, and they would have been better off making Shakur’s final fight a rematch with De Los Santos in a small 16-foot ring, where he would be forced to battle him in the trenches.
“I’m going to win for sure,” said Shakur when asked what happens in a fight between him and Tank Davis. “I think a lot of people will bet the other way and lose money, but the people that bet this way are going to lose money.”
Shakur’s only path to victory against Tank Davis would be to fight him exactly as he did Edwin De Los Santos, hitting, moving, and holding all night. He can’t beat a fighter like Tank by the conventional method because the chances of taking a knockout hit would be too high.
“I don’t got no beef with these guys,” said Shakur about whether he has any personal issues with Tank. “Hopefully, these guys are living their best life and doing everything they’re supposed to be doing outside of the ring, but we got to squabble.
“It’s getting better. I should be 100% by either the end of this month or next month,” said Shakur about the update on his surgically repaired right hand.
If Shakur’s problem right hand or his left continues to give him issues, he’s going to have to either fight with the injury against William Zepeda or move back down to 130 or 126 where there’s less need for power on his delicate limbs.
