Rehabilitation from recent knee surgery will prohibit Bob Arum from taking his usual ringside seat Saturday night either at Madison Square Garden or Coliseo de Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
The 94-year-old promoter is nonetheless looking forward to watching the Teofimo Lopez-Shakur Stevenson<\/a> and Xander Zayas-Abass Baraou<\/a> fights from the comfort of his Beverly Hills home. Lopez<\/a> (22-1, 13 KOs) will defend his Ring and WBO junior welterweight titles against Stevenson<\/a> (24-0, 11 KOs) in the 12-round main event of \u201cThe Ring 6\u201d in New York, not long after Zayas and Baraou fight for Baraou\u2019s WBA and Zayas\u2019 WBO 154-pound titles in San Juan.<\/p>\n Arum\u2019s company, Top Rank Inc., helped build Lopez and Stevenson into two of the best boxers in the sport. <\/p>\n Top Rank promoted Stevenson\u2019s first 22 professional bouts, but they no longer work together. Top Rank remains Lopez\u2019s promoter of record, but Arum isn\u2019t sure Lopez \u2013 or anyone, for that matter \u2013 is up to the task of defeating the highly skilled, intelligent Stevenson at the moment.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a terrific fight,\u201d Arum told The Ring. \u201cThat can go either way. I think until somebody shows they\u2019re gonna outsmart Shakur in the ring, it\u2019s hard to pick against him. Teofimo has to be able to outsmart him and outbox him and not just rely on his physical strength. On his best night, he can do that. That\u2019s the phrase you have to remember \u2013 it\u2019s not always his best night.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevenson, ranked seventh on The Ring\u2019s pound-for-pound list<\/a>, is a 3-1 favorite, according to DraftKings, to dethrone Lopez and become a champion in a fourth division. Lopez, however, has performed at his best when he faced his two most accomplished opponents \u2013 Vasiliy Lomachenko<\/a> and Josh Taylor<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lopez won unanimous decisions over Lomachenko in October 2020 and Taylor in June 2023. The Brooklyn native respectively became a unified 135-pound champ and The Ring\/WBO 140-pound champ by winning those two 12-round bouts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like Stevenson, Ukraine\u2019s Lomachenko and Scotland\u2019s Taylor fought from southpaw stances. They both retired last year.<\/p>\n The version of Lopez that beat Lomachenko and Taylor is the one Arum anticipates watching in a fascinating fight available to non-DAZN subscribers on pay-per-view ($69.99 in the United States; \u00a324.99 in the United Kingdom)<\/a> and to subscribers of DAZN\u2019s Ultimate monthly plan ($44.99 in the U.S.; \u00a324.99 in the UK)<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you\u2019re gonna see the best Teofimo available, well trained, at the top of his game,\u201d Arum said. \u201cWhether that\u2019s enough to beat Shakur, we\u2019ll have to see.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether Lopez can coerce the disciplined Stevenson, one of boxing\u2019s best defensive fighters, out of his game plan will be one of the foremost factors in the outcome. <\/p>\n Stevenson abandoned defense at times in his last bout \u2013 an entertaining, 12-round, unanimous points victory over aggressive Mexican southpaw William Zepeda (33-1, 27 KOs) on July 12 in nearby Queens, New York<\/a>. The 2016 Olympic silver medalist from Newark, New Jersey has stated that he won\u2019t fight that recklessly again, which figures to leave Lopez and Stevenson to engage in an elite-level chess match. Keith Idec is a senior writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rehabilitation from recent knee surgery will prohibit Bob Arum from taking his usual ringside seat Saturday night either…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,2989,2983,2831,2988,2981,2984,2985,2986,2987,2982,1920,2993,2992,1913,2976,2977,2990,2978,2975,2994,2772,85,2991,2974,2980,2979],"class_list":["post-440072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-community","tag-boxing-fights","tag-boxing-history","tag-boxing-interviews","tag-boxing-magazine","tag-boxing-photos","tag-boxing-rankings","tag-boxing-results","tag-boxing-schedule","tag-boxing-videos","tag-boxing-news","tag-disqualification","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-fighter","tag-fighter-news","tag-knockout","tag-latest-boxing-matches","tag-ring","tag-ring-magazine","tag-split-decision","tag-sports","tag-technical-knockout","tag-the-ring","tag-top-fighters","tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican-born Zayas (22-0, 13 KOs) and Germany\u2019s Baraou (17-1, 9 KOs), former sparring partners, will headline a card offered for free on the Top Rank Classics FAST channel<\/a>. <\/p>\n