Stevenson: ‘That’d be a hell of a fight with me and Gary(Russell)’
Goforitradio Staff
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After almost three months away, the sport of boxing returns. On June 9 in Las Vegas, WBO featherweight champion Shakur Stevenson battles Felix Caraballo at the MGM Grand Conference Center Grand Ballroom.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, boxing was on the shelf, but now Stevenson, who will fight Caraballo at 130 pounds, will get an opportunity to test himself at a new weight. At this point, Stevenson is not even sure if he will fight again at 126.
“I don’t know yet,” Stevenson said about fighting at 126 again on a conference call last week. “I got to see how I feel at 130, at making the 130 weight. That’d be a question I can answer better for you after the fight. So, right now, no, I can’t really give you a spot-on answer.”
If Stevenson were to return to 126, a fighter that many would love to see Stevenson in the ring with is WBC featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr, and according to Stevenson, a fight against Russell would be a great battle.
“That’d be a hell of a fight with me and Gary(Russell),” Stevenson said. “I think we really are the best two featherweights, skill-wise, in the division, so I think that’d be a hell of a fight.
“Right, Gary knows I’m the only one that… I see how he talks about everybody else, he doesn’t respect a lot of the other fighters, but he respects me a lot because he’s been around me, he knows I’m a boxer, he knows what I’m about. So, I understand Gary when he said that.”
Russell is with PBC and Stevenson is with Top Rank, so that fight, in a lot of ways, is a mythical matchup, but it were to come off, Stevenson is right, it would be a massive fight between two fighters with a lot of skill.
