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Shakur Stevenson intends to add two more 130-pound championships to his collection after Saturday night.
The undefeated southpaw won the WBO junior lightweight title by stopping Jamel Herring in the 10th round of his last fight, which took place October 23 at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. If the favored Stevenson conquers Oscar Valdez on Saturday night, he’ll leave Las Vegas with the WBC super featherweight championship as well.
The 24-year-old Stevenson’s goal then would be to become boxing’s first undisputed champion in his division during the four-belt era.
“I think it’s very important,” Stevenson said during a conference call conducted via Zoom recently. “I feel like I’m gonna try to do the undisputed a little bit different, try to go get every belt myself. So, it’s very important. But I gotta get past Valdez first. I can’t look ahead and think about what’s happening next. I’m really focused on April 30th right now.”
Should Stevenson (17-0, 9 KOs) overcome Valdez (30-0, 23 KOs) in their 12-round main event at MGM Grand Garden Arena, the Newark, New Jersey, native would need to beat WBA world champ Roger Gutierrez (26-3-1, 20 KOs) and IBF champ Kenichi Ogawa (26-1-1, 18 KOs, 1 NC) to become the fully unified 130-pound champion.
Gervonta Davis is the WBA’s “super” champion in the 130-pound division. Stevenson considers Davis a potential opponent, but Davis (26-0, 24 KOs) has competed at the 130-pound limit only once in the past three years.
Stevenson referred to some undisputed champions earning that distinction by winning multiple titles in one fight. Of the four fighters who can earn undisputed status in the coming weeks – junior middleweights Brian Castano and Jermell Charlo and lightweights George Kambosos Jr. and Devin Haney – Castano and Haney have opportunities to capture three championships apiece in one night.
Middleweights Bernard Hopkins and Jermain Taylor, junior welterweights Terence Crawford and Josh Taylor, cruiserweight Oleksandr Usyk and super middleweight Canelo Alvarez are the only boxers who’ve become undisputed champions since the IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO have all been recognized within the boxing world.
Stevenson doesn’t envision having problems defeating Valdez and then securing fights with whoever owns the WBA or IBF belts.
“Nah, not at all,” Stevenson said. “I think that after this fight I should become a big star and I just feel like it should be a lot easier to get these fighters in the ring. I’m gonna be having two belts and I think a lot of people would wanna fight for two belts, so I could see other people getting in the ring. But like I said, right now we focused on Valdez. And I’ve gotta get Valdez out the way, or we can’t even have this conversation.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.