Shakur Stevenson: ‘Boxing Lets Certain Fighters Get Away With Duckin’

Former two-division champ Shakur Stevenson recently went on the Chris Mannix Boxing Podcast and had some interesting things to say leading up to Saturday Night’s ESPN card.

As we get closer to Saturday night’s Top Rank/ESPN telecast featuring Shakur Stevenson going up against Shuichiro Yoshino, the media rounds are happening, and some interesting things are always said. Some are exaggerated, while others are more pointed toward a specific topic.

Recently, the former two-division champ Stevenson was on the Boxing with Chris Mannix podcast, and they got into quite a few topics surrounding the 25-year-old from Newark, NJ. Although Stevenson is making his lightweight debut, he felt comfortable approaching some of the more notable names. According to Stevenson, these three fighters all turned down a fight with him, and two, in particular, irked him a bit.

Stevenson told Chris Mannix, “I think it was three or four all together; Isaac Cruz, (William) Zepeda & (George) Kambosos.” When asked if he was used to it, Stevenson said, “I mean yea and no. I think that boxing lets certain fighters get away with duckin. I think if it was me, a black, young fighter saying no to fights, they would broadcast it and tell the whole world that I’m scared like they did Floyd (Mayweather) before (Manny) Pacquiao.”

Those fighters turning down the offer to fight him upset Stevenson, but two scenarios pissed him off. “I think it was two guys. Isaac Cruz pissed me off because of the fact that his excuse was that I was going to be running. You’ve seen my last few fights. I’ve been staying in the pocket, beating people up, so I disagreed with that. That kinda pissed me off. The next one that pissed me off was Zepeda because if he was really looking for an opportunity, a fight versus me would have been a perfect opportunity. It seemed like he wanted the fight. It seemed like (Oscar) De la Hoya didn’t want to allow the fight to happen. But I think that’s where he has to put his foot down and let them know that fight is definitely happening and that they can’t do nothing about it.”

The Lightweight debut 🌟

Welcome to #ShakurYoshino Fight Week! pic.twitter.com/d9Cr1uB5uJ

— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) April 3, 2023

Mannix then goes into the future with Stevenson, along with other topics found on the latest episode of his podcast Boxing with Chris Mannix.

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