Shakur Is Not Moving Up Anytime Soon

Shakur Stevenson (25-0, 11KOs) has many options after becoming the youngest four-division champion through his dominant unanimous victory over Teofimo Lopez on January 31 to capture the WBO junior welterweight title, but says a fight at 147 is not one of them as he plans to stay at 140 for a while with a possible title defense against Ryan Garcia on the horizon.

Garcia (25-2, 20KO) won the WBC 147-pound title from Mario Barrios on February 21 via an impressive unanimous decision, then followed the bout up with a call out of Stevenson for a 144-pound catchweight bout; however as reported, Garcia recently pivoted, stating he would instead move down to 140 to challenge Shakur for his title. Stevenson was happy by the change the terms, reacting to Garcia by posting, “now you’re speaking my language” as Shakur has made it clear he’s staying at junior welterweight for now.

“I think [Garcia is] serious. I think he [does] want the fight. I just think that everything gotta work well in the business, everything gotta make sense.

“Before the [Barrios] fight, I heard them saying they’ll fight me at 144[lbs]. Then, after the fight, I’m hearing 147[lbs].

“I’m not going up to 147 no time soon. I think that will be my last weight class that I’m in. I don’t think that, at 28 years old right now, I’m just going [to go] up to 147,” (h/t BoxingNewsOnline.net)

Speaking of Garcia, he was recently seen showing off his brand new WBC welterweight belt while catching some waves. The champion was spotted surfing in Malibu, taking some well-deserved downtime while keeping his new hardware close at hand.