{"id":580973,"date":"2026-04-02T15:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/580973\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T15:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:37:09","slug":"fight-for-shakur-stevensons-stripped-world-title-lined-up-for-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/580973\/","title":{"rendered":"Fight for Shakur Stevenson’s stripped world title lined up for June"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since Shakur Stevenson was stripped in early February, the WBC lightweight world title has remained vacant.<\/p>\n

Stevenson won the belt in November 2023 by beating Edwin De Los Santos. He defended it against Artem Harutyunyan, Josh Padley and William Zepeda before moving up to super-lightweight to challenge for Teofimo Lopez\u2019s WBO strap.<\/p>\n

Though he expressed interest in keeping his belt and returning to 135lbs, WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman said that Stevenson\u2019s team did not follow the correct protocol and failed to pay a sanctioning fee. The title was declared vacant shortly after the 28-year-old beat Lopez<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite having an interim champion in Jadier Herrera, the sanctioning body has opted to order a fight between number one and two contenders, Lamont Roach Jr and William Zepeda, for the full title.<\/p>\n

In its latest divisional round-up<\/a>, the WBC has confirmed that the fight is being targeted for June. It is expected to land on a Golden Boy Promotions card, and the winner will be ordered to face Herrera next.<\/p>\n

Zepeda\u2019s second crack at the belt, after giving Stevenson what he regards as the trickiest match-up of his campaign, comes against a man who many feel should already be champion in the division.<\/p>\n

Roach faced Gervonta Davis for the WBA belt at 135 last year, fighting to a draw which many felt was unfair on the challenger, particularly since \u2018Tank\u2019 Davis took a knee mid-fight and was not deducted a point.<\/p>\n

The match-up is an intriguing prospect, with Mexico\u2019s Zepeda being one of the sport\u2019s most prolific volume punchers against a slick and smart operator in Roach. Provided there are no obstacles, an official announcement won\u2019t be far in the future. Roach, speaking on X, has teased something \u2018coming soon.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since Shakur Stevenson was stripped in early February, the WBC lightweight world title has remained vacant. Stevenson won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-580973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580973","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=580973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}